The Method
How we read your organisation.
Strategy Soup reads 45 questions about how your organisation decides and distils the result into a persona: one file that teaches any AI to reason like you. Five parts build the picture. This page explains each one.
The five parts
- 01
Ingredients
15 dimensionsWhat we ask about.
- 02
Trade-offs
12 tensionsWhat the ingredients mean once they interact.
- 03
Postures
8 signaturesHow you move through the world.
- 04
Flavours
16 in 5 groupsWho you are most like.
- 05
The output
Your personaAll of it, together.
Fifteen things we measure.
Each one is scored from 0 to 100. We ask about each in three ways: what you prefer, what you did in a real situation, and what you want to be known for.
The three answers rarely match. The gaps between them are useful. They show us where the story an organisation tells itself is different from the story it is actually living.
No score is good or bad on its own. A high score is a choice, not a win. Fifty is also a choice — usually a sign that the organisation has not decided, or cannot agree.
Try one — Pace
Fast. Commitments can outrun the ability to reverse them. Strong in good weather, brittle in a storm.
Drag the handle. The caption is not a score or a grade. It describes what living at that setting tends to cost.
All fifteen
What you are trying to do
- PaceHow fast you move.
- Risk AppetiteHow much risk you take.
- HorizonHow far ahead you plan.
- ScopeHow wide you spread.
- Growth ModelHow you fund expansion.
How you decide
- Evidence BasisWhat you trust. Gut or data.
- Authority ShapeWhere decisions get made.
- Process TrustHow much process you need.
- Consensus NeedHow much agreement you want.
- Dissent HandlingWhat happens when people disagree.
What you value
- Stakeholder GravityWho matters most.
- Talent PhilosophyHow you treat people.
- Competitive StanceHow you see rivals.
- IP OpennessHow you handle ideas.
- Change PostureHow you relate to change.
Twelve trade-offs.
A single measure alone tells you very little. What matters is how ingredients combine. We look at twelve well-known strategic trade-offs — the kinds of tensions every organisation lives with.
Two ingredients can combine in ways that create a new signal. Fast pace is interesting. Fast pace with a short horizon is extractive. The combination says more than either measure alone.
Tension — Exploration vs Exploitation
Pace
82
Horizon
28
Fast pace and a short horizon. Neither is bad alone. Together they make the organisation run on what it already has, with little left over for tomorrow.
Switch the examples. Notice that neither Pace nor Horizon on its own tells you where the trade-off lands. The combination does.
All twelve
Each trade-off runs between two poles. Most organisations sit somewhere in between.
- Extract
Exploration vs Exploitation
Explore - Max output
Resilience vs Performance
Survive shocks - Say ≠ do
Coherence
Say = do - Rigid
Adaptability
Nimble - Distributed
Power Concentration
Concentrated - Incremental
Innovation Posture
Invents - Restrained
Market Aggression
Aggressive - Thin culture
Cultural Density
Thick culture - Analyse
Execution Bias
Ship - Short-term
Strategic Patience
Long-game - Hardened
Vulnerability
Exposed - Protects core
Creative Destruction
Cannibalises
Eight ways you show up.
The trade-offs describe what you are trying to do. The postures describe how you move through the world. Eight relationships every organisation has, whether it notices them or not.
Two organisations can have the same ingredients and still be very different because of how they handle failure, or how they treat outsiders, or what they do when the pressure is on.
Example signature — eight postures
Low. Uncertainty paralyses.
Low. Disagreement gets shut down.
High. Process is how things get done.
Medium. Winning raises ambition a little.
Low. Failure becomes blame or silence.
Medium. Polite, not porous.
Medium-low. Time is pressure, not an asset.
Medium. Some flexibility, not much.
Sixteen Flavours. Five groups.
Flavours are pulls, not boxes. Most organisations sit between two of them, sometimes across two different groups. The pull says more than any single name.
Read the group first. Each group has its own way of winning and its own way of failing. The named Flavour tells you which variant of the group you lean toward.
Conservative
Preserves what works.
Aggressive
Extracts and pushes.
Culture
Builds meaning and loyalty.
System
Builds order and process.
Independent
Resists central control.
Hover or tap a name to see what each Flavour is up against.
A note on coherence
Does what you say match what you do?
Most organisations describe themselves in the language of who they want to be. They act in the language of who they are. The distance between those two is the coherence signal.
A high coherence score does not mean you are virtuous. It means your profile can be read at face value. A low score does not mean the profile is wrong — it means you need to read it with care. The diagnostic uses coherence to weight confidence in every other number on the page.
Dissent Handling — same ingredient, two organisations
Stated / scenario gap
44
Coherence (this ingredient)
28
Leaders describe a culture that welcomes dissent. Scenario responses show dissent being shut down as it appears. The organisation is not lying; it cannot see the gap.
05 — The output
All five parts, together.
The diagnostic shows all five parts at once: a ingredients breakdown, a trade-offs map, a posture signature, an Flavour pull, a coherence score. None of them is the answer on its own. The answer is the pattern they make together.
Two organisations can land on the same Flavour and mean very different things by it. One got there through rigour. The other through fear. The persona is what tells them apart.
How to read it
Start with the trade-offs, not the ingredients.
A measure on its own can mislead you. The same Pace score means different things depending on the Horizon it is paired with. Read the tensions first.
Look at the gap before the score.
Coherence is the most useful number on the page. A score of 60 with a big gap between what you say and what you do is not really a 60 — it is a blind spot.
Read the group before the Flavour.
Most organisations sit between two Flavours. The group tells you more about posture than the specific name. Use the name as a variant, not a label.
When to use it
Why build a persona?
Seven moments when a persona of your organisation earns its place.
Before a strategy offsite.
Everyone walks in with a different picture of the organisation. Start the conversation from a common one.
During a restructure.
Know what you are reshaping before you redraw the lines. Avoid breaking the parts that actually work.
After a leadership change.
Understand the place the new leader is inheriting, not just the place the CV describes.
In a merger or acquisition.
Compare two personas side by side before the integration plan is written. See where the cultures will grind.
When modelling competitors or partners.
Build a persona for another organisation from public signals. See how they tend to decide, where they are rigid, where they will move.
Before a wargame or scenario exercise.
Run your persona against other Flavours under pressure. See how your strategy holds up before the real version arrives.
When the same patterns keep repeating.
Why do we always slow down at the same point? Why do good plans stop shipping? The persona usually explains why.
What you get
Four things you walk away with.
The diagnostic takes about 15 minutes. The persona it produces is yours to keep and put to work.
- 01
A picture of how you actually work.
Not what the strategy doc says. Not what the values page claims. The behaviour underneath, across all five parts of the model.
- 02
Named blind spots.
The specific ingredients where what you say is most out of step with what you do. The places surprise tends to come from.
- 03
A shared language.
Twelve well-known strategic trade-offs the whole leadership team can use in conversation, planning, and disagreement.
- 04
A persona you can put to work.
Load it into any AI and every answer comes back aligned to how your organisation actually thinks. Use it in the twin chat, as a wargame actor, or in any tool that accepts a system prompt.