Step 1 (week 1): frame the question and approve the sources
Write the question with leadership in one sentence, such as whether to enter a named market with a named product in a named year, and the criteria that would make the answer yes or no. Then approve the sources the Market-Entry Strategist Digital FTE may use: your own sales and customer data, the public regulatory and market information you name, and any research documents you upload, with licence terms checked. Record what leadership knew before the assessment: the open questions and the sources already in hand.
The FTE does not go beyond the approved sources, so the list is the boundary of the evidence.
Step 2 (week 2): the readiness assessment and the barrier analysis
The FTE delivers the readiness assessment as a mission output: demand signals, regulatory requirements, pricing context, and channel availability, each with its source, and each marked as resting on strong evidence or on inference. The barrier analysis names the specific obstacles, competitive, regulatory, localisation, and distribution, rated for difficulty and for what clearing each would require.
Leadership reads both for gaps, not conclusions. Where the evidence is thin the assessment says so, and a thin area may need a source added before week three.
- Demand: sourced or inferred, per signal
- Regulatory: what must be true before selling, cited
- Barriers: competitive, regulatory, localisation, distribution, rated
- Gaps: stated, with what would fill them
Step 3 (week 3): the proposal, and the line-by-line challenge
The go-to-market proposal arrives in Approvals in six parts: entry model, sequencing, first segments, assumptions, resourcing, and risks with early-warning signals, every assumption labelled sourced with its source or inferred with its reasoning. Leadership reviews by attacking the inferred assumptions first: what would make each true or false, who in the room has evidence, what the plan looks like if it is wrong. Send back any risk without a signal.
A send-back on an assumption returns a revised section that addresses it, such as alternative segments compared on the same criteria, and the history of challenges is logged.
Step 4 (week 4): the decision and the monitoring list
Leadership decides, from the proposal and its record, and the decision is theirs; the FTE never commits spend or signs anything. If the decision is to proceed, the plan becomes a mission with visible progress and the risks become the monitoring list: each early-warning signal is watched, and movement appears in the morning brief with evidence and a proposed response. If the decision is not to proceed, the assessment and its record are kept for the next time the question arises.
Set the cadence at which the plan is revisited against its own labelled assumptions.
What does done look like at day 30?
Done is a decision made from a proposal whose every assumption was visible and challengeable, a record showing what was challenged and how the plan changed, and, if proceeding, a monitoring list that keeps the assumptions honest as reality arrives. The comparison with how the last such decision was made, in time from question to plan and in how much rested on evidence rather than instinct, is the honest measure.
Leadership spent the review time on judgement rather than on assembling evidence, which is the point of the sequence.
How do you bring in a senior human without paying twice?
If a consultant or senior executive is involved, bring them in at week three with the labelled proposal in hand rather than at week one with a blank page. Their engagement then covers the inferred assumptions leadership cannot settle from evidence and the boardroom case, and ends with a recommendation the FTE executes and monitors. The organization pays for evidence by metered work and for judgement by the hour, and neither is paid to do the other's job.
Consultants who work this way tend to prefer it, because their time goes to judgement and their recommendation is watched after they leave.
What should you refuse to do?
Refuse a question too vague to answer; send it back to leadership before the FTE starts. Refuse to add sources the FTE was not approved to use after the fact; add them in week one or two and let the assessment update. Refuse to accept a risk without a signal, because it cannot be monitored. And refuse to let the proposal be accepted or rejected whole when a single assumption is the issue; that is what line-by-line labelling is for.
These refusals turn a strategy document into an instrument.