Use when the engine's research must be turned into consulting-grade problem solving: issue trees, hypothesis-led workplans, analysis plans, stakeholder management, implementation logic, and transformation framing. Encodes consulting craft without relaxing evidence discipline.
Use when the engine's research must be turned into consulting-grade problem solving: issue trees, hypothesis-led workplans, analysis plans, stakeholder management, implementation logic, and transformation framing. Encodes consulting craft without relaxing evidence discipline.
Use when research must become consulting-grade diagnosis, recommendation, workplan, or transformation framing.
Use when the deliverable needs issue trees, hypotheses, quantified options, or implementation logic.
Do Not Use When
The task is purely academic writing or pure source collection with no client decision attached.
The work only needs prose polish rather than consulting problem-structuring.
Consulting Intake Guidance
Client or decision-owner question.
Time horizon and constraints.
Expected deliverable and implementation ambition.
Consulting Method Detail
Read this SKILL.md first, then load only the relevant reference file for the current phase.
Structure the problem before expanding the workplan.
Tie analyses and recommendations back to the client decision throughout.
Quality Standards
Decision owner and question are explicit.
Issue tree and hypotheses are visible.
Recommendation includes value, risk, and implementation implications.
Consulting Failure Notes
Workstreams with no governing client question.
Recommendations with no owner or sequence.
Treating stakeholder politics as outside the analysis.
Consulting Deliverable Detail
A consulting-grade problem frame, workplan, recommendation structure, or implementation path.
References
Use the references/ files for problem framing, workplans, stakeholders, and transformation logic.
This skill turns a research corpus into a consulting-grade decision process. It is about how to structure the problem, sequence the analysis, manage the client interface, and carry recommendations into implementation.
Consulting output must be more than polished slides. Run critical-reasoning-and-argument before finalizing issue trees, hypotheses, options, recommendations, value cases, risks, or implementation logic.
When to use
Strategy, market-entry, growth, transformation, or operating-model work
Client-facing diagnostics or recommendations
Internal decision memos that must survive executive scrutiny
Research that must lead to quantified choices, implementation options, or a value case
Five rules
Start from the client decision. The problem statement must name the decision, owner, and time horizon.
Structure before analysis. Use issue trees, hypotheses, and workplans before gathering endless facts.
Quantify the value and the risk. A recommendation without upside, downside, and assumptions is unfinished.
Manage stakeholders explicitly. Good analysis fails when the buyer, blocker, and user were treated as the same person.
Implementation begins in the diagnosis. Recommendations must name who does what, in what sequence, and what proves progress.
Reason before recommendation. Every recommendation must pass critical-reasoning-and-argument: argument map, strongest objection, alternatives, evidence sufficiency, and implementation constraints.
Router
Situation
Load
Framing the problem and hypothesis tree
references/problem-framing-and-issue-trees.md
Designing the analyses and workplan
references/consulting-workplan-and-analysis.md
Managing client, team, and stakeholders
references/client-and-stakeholder-management.md
Transformation / implementation / agile delivery
references/implementation-and-transformation.md
Core workflow
Define the governing client question.
Break it into an issue tree and draft initial hypotheses.
Design the analysis plan: what must be true, what data proves it, what would falsify it.
Sequence the work into a workplan with owners and decision points.
Translate findings into options, value case, risks, and implementation path.
Ship gate
Decision owner, question, and time horizon named
Issue tree or equivalent decomposition exists
Critical-reasoning gate passed for hypotheses, options, recommendations, risks, and implementation implications
Hypotheses are testable, not slogans
Analyses are tied to decisions, not curiosity
Stakeholders mapped beyond the formal sponsor
Recommendation includes assumptions, risks, and implementation path
Metrics or KPIs identified for tracking progress
Consulting Source Pitfalls
Research with no client decision attached
Workstream explosion because the problem was never decomposed
Elegant recommendation with no owner or sequencing
Treating stakeholder politics as outside the scope of strategy
