The company, read honestly.
The organization behind the brand — what they actually are, not what their deck says. Stakeholders, portfolio, capabilities, organizational tensions, the execution constraints that decide whether a strategy survives contact with reality.
Each assessment is a self-contained file — backup, share, restore. Outputs are designed to feed downstream tools: Brand Worlds, Category Assessment's attackable angles, Foresight's capability-gap signals.
Setup & framing.
Engagement context, company identity, what you know going in, what's at stake. The frame that shapes every downstream section.
Why this assessment?
The shape of the read depends on this. The same company looks different through the lens of an acquisition diligence than through a competitive-intelligence read.
Who we're reading.
Basic identity. Get this right — the downstream sections all anchor to it. If the company has a parent, subsidiary structure, or naming complexity, capture it now.
The priors.
Before the work, externalize what you think you already know. The structured priors below force you to name your assumptions so they can be tested — not carried unexamined into the read.
Structured priors
Specific claims or hypotheses you're carrying in — with a confidence read. The work will validate, sharpen, or kill each one. Strong priors are falsifiable.
The stakes.
A read isn't free. Name the decision it's supporting, the cost of getting it wrong, and the definition of a meaningful answer — so the work knows when to stop.
What the research should treat as given.
Facts you already know. Each one gets quoted into the contract preamble so the researcher takes them as ground truth rather than wasting effort re-deriving them. Optional source helps the researcher cite consistently.
Calibrate depth per baseline area.
Default is standard depth across all six baseline areas. Mark any area as extra or lighter to bias the deep-dive toward what this engagement actually needs. The baseline prompts still run; the emphasis just signals where to go deeper or where to stay tight.
Append research areas beyond baseline.
Optional. Add focus areas the engagement needs that aren't covered by the six baselines — financial deep-dive, ESG, regulatory exposure, supply-chain depth, or anything bespoke. Start from a library template (then modify), or build from scratch.
Who's reading this?
Shapes the tone and depth of the executive summary at the top of the Profile artifact. Internal teams want different read-out than a board or investment committee.
Stakeholder map.
Who matters, what each cares about, pressure points, blockers. The people who decide whether work ships.
Map the people who decide.
The stakeholder map is what separates a paper strategy from a shippable one. The question isn't just "who has the title?" — it's who carries influence, what each one cares about, and where the friction sits.
Planned shape:
- Stakeholder cards — name, role, formal authority, informal influence read
- What each cares about — the lens through which they evaluate work
- Pressure points — incentives, constraints, political exposure
- Blocker read — what they would say no to, and why
- Coalitions — who tends to move together, who tends to be at odds
Portfolio analysis.
Brands they own, roles each plays, gaps, overlaps, rationalization opportunities, white space within the portfolio.
Read the portfolio honestly.
Most portfolios were assembled, not designed. The work here is to read the actual structure — what each brand does for the company, where the overlaps and gaps are, what could be rationalized, where there's room to play that isn't yet occupied.
Planned shape:
- Brand cards — name, role in portfolio, target consumer, price tier, channel mix
- Role classification — flagship, growth, defensive, milking, exploratory
- Overlap and cannibalization read
- Gaps — what the portfolio doesn't reach that the company could plausibly reach
- Internal white space — opportunities that don't require new capability, only new framing
Technology & capabilities.
What they can actually build. Tech stack, manufacturing footprint, R&D model, scientific or design capabilities, dependencies.
What can they actually do?
This is the "can we execute" axis that white-space interrogation points to. Strategies die where capability gaps live. Read the capabilities honestly — assets, dependencies, what they own vs. rent, where their actual leverage sits.
Planned shape:
- Capability inventory — manufacturing, R&D, design, scientific, digital, distribution
- Tier / strength assessment for each
- Dependency map — what they own vs. outsource vs. partner for
- Asymmetric assets — where they have something competitors can't easily replicate
- Capability gaps — what would need to be built, bought, or partnered for to unlock named opportunities
Organizational read.
Structure, decision-making, cultural tensions, "we are never able to launch anything" patterns. Honest read on execution capacity.
The pattern beneath the org chart.
Org charts describe reporting lines; they don't describe how decisions actually get made. This section reads the patterns — where consensus is required, where authority is unclear, what kinds of work consistently fail to ship even when everyone agrees they should.
Planned shape:
- Decision-making patterns — who actually decides what, formal vs. real
- Cultural tensions — where the values pull in different directions
- Failure patterns — what kinds of things this org consistently fails to do
- Success patterns — what kinds of things this org does well, and why
- Execution capacity read — honest assessment of what this org can ship
Financial & regulatory context.
Money pressures, margin structure, regulatory exposure, M&A history, ownership trajectory. The structural constraints.
The structural constraints.
The money shapes what's possible. Margin structure decides what kinds of bets the company can make; ownership trajectory decides over what timeframe; regulatory exposure decides what categories of risk are off the table. These constraints are often the unspoken backdrop of strategic conversations — making them explicit changes the conversation.
Planned shape:
- Margin structure read — gross, operating, where the leverage points sit
- Money pressures — debt load, cash position, near-term capital needs
- M&A history — what they've bought, sold, integrated well, fumbled
- Ownership trajectory — where this is heading (IPO, sale, generational handoff, status quo)
- Regulatory exposure — categories of risk, jurisdictions, known fights
Synthesis & implications.
Company truths, what shapes what they can do, prerequisites for execution. The exportable output.
The company truths.
The output that feeds downstream tools. Sharp, defensible statements about what this company is, what shapes what they can do, and what would have to be true for a given strategy to ship through them.
Planned shape:
- Company truths — 3–7 defensible propositions about who they actually are
- What shapes what they can do — the structural forces from earlier sections, distilled
- Execution prerequisites — what has to be true for strategy X to actually ship
- POV summary — narrative read on the company, calibrated to the use case from Section 01
- Exportable shape that feeds Brand Worlds, Category Assessment, Foresight
Profile research contract.
Draft contract assembled from your Setup. Edit any prompt before exporting. Save and export downloads the contract as a markdown file and snapshots this version into the assessment.
Gap analysis & discussion guides.
Read the attached Profile, identify what you don't yet know, weight it, then generate tailored discussion guides for the people you'll interview.