Business Impact
This layer helps you keep the narrative clean: ask the right questions, involve the right people, and articulate value in business language.
Questions
- What changes financially if nothing is done?
- Where is money lost, delayed, or at risk?
- What would an executive sponsor measure as success?
- What is the cost of inaction over 6–12 months?
- Which outcome moves a board-level metric?
Relations
- CEO / GM
- CFO / Finance
- Revenue leadership (CRO/VP Sales)
- COO / Operations leadership
Value
- Revenue acceleration or protection
- Cost reduction (run-rate)
- Risk mitigation (financial/legal)
- Strategic optionality (faster bets)
- Decision confidence (less blind spots)
Signals to look for
- Hiring surges (Eng/Platform/Data/Security)
- New executive hires or re-orgs
- Pricing changes / packaging shifts
- Major product launches
- High-profile outages or trust events
Metrics to watch
- Activation → Adoption → Expansion
- Retention / churn drivers
- Release frequency & lead time
- Incident rate & MTTR
- Unit economics: CAC, LTV, gross margin
Talk-track template
- Context: what changed in the business / market?
- Impact: what cost / risk / delay does it create?
- Decision: what must be true to win?
- Next step: define a proof + timeline.
Obsidian note structure
Create one note per layer and keep the same headings: Questions • Relations • Value. Your vault becomes a consistent thinking system.