The decision instruction.
The firm instructs a decision the way a case is instructed: establish before concluding, hear each party, write down what remains uncertain. The method holds in four steps, and the same discipline applies to an investment, a reorganisation, the replacement of a manager or a succession. The material changes; the rigour never does.
- First
Frame
State the decision in one sentence: what it commits, by when, and what we refuse to decide at the same time. Most bad decisions are good answers to a badly framed question.
Glossary: the decision question - Second
Establish
Separate facts from assumptions, and both from interested claims. Name explicitly what is not known and what will not be known in time. This is where strategic intelligence comes in: open sources, interviews, reading the accounts.
Glossary: the situation picture - Third
Build
Two or three real options, never one dressed up with two foils. For each: its conditions for success, its breaking points, what it makes irreversible, and the signal that would indicate it is time to change course.
Glossary: the real option - Fourth
Decide and hold
Decide, say why in terms the organisation will understand, and prepare the explanation the decision will have to withstand before staff, board, partners or the public. Then set the date on which it will be reviewed.
Glossary: the review schedule
- 01FrameThe decision question, written and validated
- 02EstablishThe sourced situation picture, with its blind spots
- 03BuildTwo or three real, comparable options
- 04Decide and holdThe decision, its rationale, its review schedule
What sets the decision instruction apart.
At the second step, the firm applies a discipline that comes from intelligence work, not from consulting.
Every decision rests on a picture of the situation, and that picture is almost always made of three materials mixed together: what is known, what is assumed, and what others have an interest in making one believe. A supplier, a partner, a manager, a competitor, a press article: each brings a narrative, and the most convincing narrative is not the most accurate. The firm separates these three materials before building the options, from open sources, the figures and interviews, and it writes down in plain terms what remains uncertain.
This discipline is the one set out in Intelligence Stratégique. It serves in every engagement, whether an investment, a dispute between partners or a hiring decision. It also serves, more rarely, when an organisation is targeted by an unfavourable information campaign and has to decide and explain itself under pressure; the firm handles such situations when they arise, in coordination with the company's legal counsel and communications.
Dated, observed or documented facts: figures, contracts, decisions taken, departures, complaints.
Convictions without date or document. They stay here until verified.
Narratives brought by others, with who says it and what they have an interest in making one believe.
Named in writing before building the options; never filled by an estimate.
Nothing moves into the first column without verification.
StratBoard, the firm's instrument.
A decision is rarely made without the numbers. StratBoard is the tool the firm developed to read a company's accounts from the executive's point of view: what the figures say about clients, margins and dependencies, and what they foreshadow.
Reading, not bookkeeping
StratBoard does not replace the accountant. It turns the figures into the questions an executive has to ask.
Used in engagements
Every engagement that touches finances relies on this reading, from the second step of the method onwards.
Available on its own
Executives who want this reading without an advisory engagement find it at stratboard.ch. StratBoard is developed and operated by CIABATTI: it is the firm's instrument, not a separate company.
Three principles.
Simple to state, hard to keep. That is why a firm exists.
Contradiction is a service
The firm is paid to say what the executive's entourage no longer says. An engagement without disagreement is a failed one.
Uncertainty is named
What is not known is written down, with what it would take to know it and what that would cost.
Discretion is the rule
No engagement is cited, no client named. This site contains no logos and no testimonials, and never will.
Let us talk about the decision you have to make.
A first conversation is enough to know whether the method applies to your situation.