/strategy-review

name: strategy-review
description: "Use when reviewing, critiquing, or stress-testing an existing strategy document. Evaluates seven dimensions \u2014 diagnosis quality, guiding policy strength, action coherence, assumption exposure, falsifiability \u2014 with optional 7S, Five Forces, Balanced Scorecard, and Hoshin Kanri lenses. Triggers on: review my strategy, poke holes in this plan, what's weak here, strategy audit, red team this. Does NOT build strategy (use strategy-interview) or brainstorm project ideas (use brainstorm-beagle)."
user-invocable: true

Strategy Review

Pressure-test strategy documents to find where they'll break before reality does it for you. The primary job isn't to evaluate prose quality or check formatting — it's to find the gaps, hidden failure paths, and under-accounted risks that will kill the strategy in execution. A strategy that survives this review has a meaningfully better chance of surviving contact with the real world.

This skill complements the [strategy-interview](../strategy-interview/SKILL.md) skill. Strategy-interview helps *build* a strategy through guided conversation; strategy-review subjects an existing strategy to rigorous adversarial evaluation using the same kernel framework (diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions) and bad-strategy filter.

What makes this different from generic feedback

Most strategy feedback falls into two useless categories: vague praise ("this is really thoughtful") or surface-level nitpicking ("consider adding a timeline"). Neither helps the author see whether their thinking actually holds up under stress.

This review does three things that generic feedback doesn't:

1. **Tests structural integrity** — whether the logical chain from diagnosis through guiding policy to coherent actions actually holds together, or whether the "therefore" between them is secretly an "and also." 2. **Hunts for failure paths** — not just what's wrong with the document, but what goes wrong in the *real world* because of what's missing. The slow drift scenario, the capability gap that stalls the load-bearing action, the competitor response nobody modeled, the political resistance the strategy pretends doesn't exist. 3. **Surfaces invisible assumptions** — every strategy is a bet, but most strategies don't name their bets. This review finds the load-bearing assumptions the author hasn't stated and maps the risk of each one being wrong.

Before you start

Read `references/review-dimensions.md` — it contains the seven evaluation dimensions and their criteria. This is the backbone of the review. Keep it in working memory throughout.

Hard gates (evidence-bound)

These steps are easy to rationalize without evidence; each gate has a **pass condition** before you advance.

1. **Ratings (Step 3).** Do not assign Strong, Adequate, or Weak for any dimension until you have at least one of: a quoted or section-referenced passage from the strategy inputs, a `strategy-notes.md` (or equivalent) cross-reference, or an explicit **Missing** note stating that no relevant passage exists. **Pass:** every dimension that is rated has one of those anchors on record (in chat, in `dimension-ratings.md` if using durable state, or inline in the final review). 2. **Critical findings (Step 5).** Do not list an item under Critical findings unless it ties to the same kind of anchor (quote, section ref, notes cross-ref, or explicit absence). **Pass:** no critical finding is only a generic critique with no tie to the document or notes. 3. **Judge artifact mode.** **Order:** finalize prose `strategy-review.md` → derive `strategy-review.json` from that prose → run the validation checklist in `references/judge-artifact-schema.md` → emit or save JSON only after the checklist passes (parses, required fields, score arithmetic). **Pass:** JSON validates and matches the prose labels and evidence. 4. **Durable state (when `.beagle/.../reviews/.../` exists).** Before you call the review complete, ensure `review-state.md` exists and its `current_step` and lens/kernel fields match what you actually did (Steps 1–5 and files on disk). **Pass:** ledger reflects the true step and inputs; if `dimension-ratings.md` or `kernel-extraction.md` were created, the final `strategy-review.md` does not contradict them.

Complementary review lenses

The kernel evaluation (diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions) is always the backbone. Four additional lenses load conditionally when the strategy document warrants them. **Do not force them.** Most reviews use one or two; some use none. A lens loads when the document's content triggers it — not as a mandatory checklist.

Lenses sharpen the existing seven dimensions rather than adding new ones. When a lens reveals a gap, the finding belongs under the relevant dimension. The lens is the tool that found the gap; the dimension is where it lives.

| Lens | When it loads | What it adds | Primary dimensions | |------|--------------|-------------|-------------------| | **McKinsey 7S** (Execution Alignment) | Strategy requires organizational change — new structure, processes, cultural shift, or cross-functional coordination | Checks whether the strategy accounts for alignment across structure, systems, shared values, style, staff, and skills. The most common gap: the strategy changes direction but assumes the organization will follow. | Dim 3, Dim 6 | | **Balanced Scorecard** (Objective Translation) | Success criteria are one-dimensional (usually financial only) or vague | Checks whether success is measurable across financial, customer, process, and learning perspectives. Financial metrics are lagging — the strategy needs leading indicators that signal problems before revenue confirms them. | Dim 7 | | **Porter's Five Forces** (Competitive Pressure Audit) | Diagnosis addresses competitive dynamics — market position, pricing pressure, new entrants, substitution risk | Checks whether the diagnosis saw the full competitive picture, no