Strategic Value
This layer helps you keep the narrative clean: ask the right questions, involve the right people, and articulate value in business language.
Questions
- How does this align to the company’s 12–24 month priorities?
- What is the competitive pressure forcing change?
- Which strategic initiative needs better execution confidence?
- Where does platform reliability become a differentiator?
- What must be true for the strategy to succeed?
Relations
- C-level
- Head of Strategy / BizOps
- VP Product
- VP Engineering
- Customer leadership
Value
- Competitive advantage
- Strategic alignment
- Faster execution of big bets
- Better customer retention drivers
- Clear trade-offs (build vs buy vs simplify)
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.