Three phases. One loop.
Q² does not float free. It runs inside a three-phase process.
Three phases, built for corporate affairs and communications. Assessment → Strategy → Execution. Three rules govern it: Assessment is where most of the effort goes and is the stage most practitioners skip; Strategy is a small set of decisions (target, position, objective), not a document; measurement is set at the objective, uses the same instrument as the Assessment baseline, and feeds the next Assessment. The process is a loop, not a funnel. Strategy means decisions made and things sacrificed, not a calendar of activity. The Assessment is wider than a customer view (seven lenses, because corporate affairs and communications answer to more than customers) and the Execution mix is POET.
Each phase hands exactly one noun to the next. The chain: Opportunity → Idea → Plan → Impact → (next) Opportunity.
Delivers
Opportunity
Capture (upside to take) and Protect (downside to prevent).
Delivers
Idea
Position × Target × Intended Outcome.
Delivers
Plan and Impact
POET applied to the target groups chosen in Strategy; Impact measured on the same instrument.
Opportunity → Idea → Plan → Impact → (next) Opportunity.
Assessment → delivers the Opportunity.
The gap between where the stakeholder segments currently stand and what the client could credibly own.
- Two-sided, always.
- The Opportunity is delivered in two halves: Capture (upside to take) and Protect (downside to prevent). Neither half may be silently empty; if there is nothing to capture or nothing to protect, the Assessment says so. One noun, two halves — no separate "exposure" or "risk" deliverable, no eighth risk lens.
- Protect is board-legible.
- Each Protect-side risk is expressed in enterprise-risk language: the lenses generating it, likelihood, and magnitude of impact if unaddressed. This is how corporate affairs feeds the board's existing risk register rather than reporting beside it. Protecting licence to operate is an opportunity to define the ground before someone else does.
- A conclusion, not a scan.
- A landscape deck that describes without concluding has not completed Assessment.
- Segmentation happens here.
- Stakeholder groups are carved in Assessment so they can be selected in Strategy.
Assessment is run through seven lenses. Each lens is an input; the Opportunity (Capture + Protect) is the single output.
| # | Lens | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Market and competitive | New entrants, substitutes, competitor positioning moves, category consolidation |
| 2 | Regulatory and political | Rule changes, enforcement climate, legislative agenda, political cycle, jurisdictional divergence |
| 3 | Financial community expectations | Investor and analyst narratives, stewardship/ESG posture, activist exposure, equity story told vs received |
| 4 | Leadership change | CEO, board, strategy pivot at the client; also at competitors, regulators, key institutions |
| 5 | Stakeholder expectations and tastes | Customers, employees, communities, NGOs, partners — what is now expected, unacceptable, newly interesting |
| 6 | Information environment | Media structure, platform shifts, AI-mediated discovery (the POET thesis) |
| 7 | Internal baseline | The client's own reputation, employee sentiment, licence to operate, capability to act |
Four forcing questions, applied to every lens
- 01
What changed?
- 02
Who did it change things for? (Which stakeholder segments.)
- 03
Does it open or close a gap the client could own?
- 04
What is the probability and magnitude of harm if nothing changes?
Question 3 finds the gap (feeds Capture). Question 4 prices the downside (feeds Protect). Only lenses that answer 3 or 4 contribute to the Opportunity. Everything else is context: filed, not presented. This is the guard against Assessment degrading into monitoring. Trends are context inside the lenses, never the source of the Opportunity; the failure mode is strategy driven by what is new rather than by what stakeholders actually do.
How a source becomes a signal, a gap, and an upside or a risk.
| Lens | Quant sources | Qual sources | Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Market and competitive | Share, category and competitor data; search and social volume | Expert analysis; competitor-customer interviews | Event + drift |
| 2 Regulatory and political | Filings, rulemaking volume, enforcement counts; policy polling | Policymaker and staff interviews (n≈35) | Event + drift |
| 3 Financial community | Financial performance data; analyst coverage; stewardship ratings | Investor and analyst conversations | Drift (event for activist) |
| 4 Leadership change | Almost none | Internal expert perspectives; leadership interviews | Event |
| 5 Stakeholder expectations | Surveys (n≈1,000 market / n≈200 B2B); customer-service volume | Open-ends; focus groups; customer-service voice of customer | Drift |
| 6 Information environment | Media, social, search, LLM discoverability data; paid signals | Journalist and platform-side interviews | Event + drift |
| 7 Internal baseline | Employee surveys (~10% of population, full coverage); reputation tracking | Internal expert perspectives; employee open-ends | Drift |
| Resolves into | Capture — the gap to own | Protect — the downside to price |
Anonymity floor of n=25 applies throughout.
Strategy → delivers the Idea.
Idea = Position × Target × Intended Outcome. The position the client takes, with the groups chosen, to produce a specific change.
- All three components must be present. An idea without a chosen target or a quantified intended outcome is a campaign theme, not a strategy.
- The Idea is the position, not the narrative. Messaging, creative platform and story are Execution outputs. Corporate affairs habitually merges these; the Standard keeps them apart.
- The intended outcome is quantified against the baselines set in Assessment.
Publishing a study is a Strategy decision: a positioning move about the organization's authority on a topic.
Execution → delivers the Plan and the Impact.
- Plan:
- POET applied to the target groups chosen in Strategy — how to most effectively reach them.
- Impact:
- measured against the intended outcome set in the Idea, on the baselines set in Assessment, using the same instrument. Impact then becomes input to the next Assessment.
- Impact is not reach.
- Coverage, sentiment, share of voice and impressions are tactical metrics: they report progress toward the Impact, they do not constitute it. Execution cannot be declared complete on activity.
Four rules, across the three phases.
- Opportunity rule
- Assessment delivers a conclusion in two halves, Capture and Protect; Protect in enterprise-risk language (lenses, likelihood, magnitude).
- Idea rule
- Idea = Position × Target × Intended Outcome. All three present, or it is a theme. Position is not narrative; narrative is an Execution output.
- Measurement rule
- Instrument fixed in Strategy; baseline set in Assessment, with confidence bands, mandatory; Impact reported in Execution on the same instrument; results fed to the next Assessment.
- Handoff rule
- The actionability and transferability scores travel with every insight from phase to phase. Nothing below Narrow enters Strategy.
Manufactured, selected, consumed.
Q² = Iⁿ is manufactured in Assessment, selected in Strategy, consumed and re-fed in Execution. The actionability and transferability scores are the handoff object.
- Assessment.
- Quant sizes the market, the segments and the lens signals; qual explains why segments behave as they do. Outputs are scored on a and t, tagged Capture or Protect, and placed in the four-corner table. Observations and Platitudes are discarded here; only Narrow and Scalable insights proceed to Strategy. Baselines are set here and must carry confidence bands — a hard requirement, because the re-open triggers fire on the band. t determines whether the Opportunity is one-market or multi-market. Protect-side risks use the same probability machinery: likelihood × impact, with stated confidence.
- Strategy.
- Qual generates candidate ideas (personas built from open-ends, focus groups, internal expert perspectives); quant validates which idea lands with which group. a decides which idea is worth committing to; t decides how broadly the target can be set. Intended outcome is set from the Assessment baselines, and the measurement instrument is fixed here. Publishing a study is a Strategy decision: a positioning move about the organization's authority on a topic.
- Execution.
- Quant measures reach and delivery on probability-era KPIs; qual measures resonance and meaning. t is tested empirically: an insight scored transferable either holds in the second market or it doesn't — rescore it. All Execution exhaust (media, social, search, customer service, performance) is new quant and qual input to the next Assessment.
In Build/Prove terms: Build runs in Assessment and Strategy; Prove runs in Execution and feeds the next Assessment.
Cadence and re-open triggers.
An annual diagnosis is the marketing habit. Corporate affairs and communications cannot live on it: a regulatory shift or a CEO exit lands mid-cycle. The standard is deep Assessment annually; continuous signal tracking across the seven lenses in between, with the brain flagging when a lens has moved enough to re-open the Opportunity.
Trigger rule
Every lens carries one or both trigger types. Event lenses re-open on occurrence of a defined event. Drift lenses re-open when a tracked baseline moves outside its stated confidence band. A trigger re-opens the affected lens only; the lens is re-run through the four forcing questions, and the Opportunity is re-issued only if the answer to question 3 or 4 changes.
No numeric thresholds: the confidence band sets them, per client. Example triggers by lens: new entrant or share leaves band; rule passed or enforcement tempo shifts; analyst sentiment leaves band or activist files; appointment or exit; tracked sentiment leaves band; platform policy change or discoverability leaves band; employee or reputation score leaves band.
Prove it. Then bring it to life.
Every phase runs on the same sources, each read twice.