SPRINT:
The Logic of Choice
Vagueness is the silent killer of margin.
SPRINT is the disciplined intervention that converts your "Desired Future" into a singular, validated strategic direction. Most strategic plans are "And" documents—a list of every good idea the team has. A true strategy is an "Or" document. It requires the courage to choose one path and explicitly reject others. Using the WWHTBT (What Would Have To Be True) framework, SPRINT replaces "Polite Consensus" with a rigorous architecture of trade-offs, ensuring your direction is a validated choice rather than a high-stakes wager. We deliver strategic clarity in exactly 30 days.
The Protocol: Four Weeks to Clarity
The SPRINT is a pulse-based engagement designed to avoid executive overload while keeping momentum high. It requires approximately 6–8 hours of total CEO time.
Week 1: Foundation & Choices: We define the Strategic Problem Statement—the measurable performance gap your strategy must close. We then generate a Possibility Set of 3–4 mutually distinct strategic paths.
Week 2: Logic & Modeling: We shift the debate from subjective opinions to "What Must Be True" (WWHTBT) logic. By reverse-engineering the conditions required for success, we identify the high-stakes assumptions that currently masquerade as facts. We then build a Business Model Canvas (v1) to make the business logic tangible.
Week 3: Light Validation: We gather quick, real-world signals to pressure-test your most fragile assumptions. Through 5–8 targeted stakeholder conversations, we look for patterns that confirm or contradict your logic.
Week 4: Integration & Synthesis: We consolidate the evidence into a singular clarity packet. This concludes with a One-Page CEO Summary—a 10-minute alignment tool designed to move your leadership team from confusion to shared understanding.
The Professional Standard
Strategic decisions require an objective fiduciary. Mark Haas is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) with 20 years of experience as an Ethics Officer. This tenure ensures a "Neutral Third Space" where the truth can be surfaced without political blowback. During a SPRINT, Mark facilitates the "fierce conversations" required to reach clarity, providing the seasoned judgment needed to navigate complex organizational trade-offs.
Engagement Protocol Details
The Logic of Velocity: Speed is a competitive advantage. SPRINT focuses on the 20% of choices that drive 80% of the results. We prevent "Analysis Paralysis" by using a compressed timeline to reach the Logic of Choice.
Strategic Discipline vs. Planning: Traditional firms often provide data-heavy reports that defer the hard choices back to the CEO. SPRINT builds a Strategic Discipline—a living habit that moves your leadership team from reaction to decision, gaining the visceral focus required to say "no" to distractions with absolute confidence.
The Diagnostic Requirement: For those moving into a SPRINT, the PRIME Calibration serves as the essential targeting system. It ensures that 30 days of decision-making are based on the reality of your business, not just the loudest "fire" in the room.
Understanding vs. Commitment: The Sprint produces Clarity, not final Board commitment or a detailed operating plan. It is the strategic equivalent of "clearing brush" before building the structure.
The Bridge to BUILD: If the SPRINT reveals that your chosen path requires deep validation, complex financial modeling, or a new operating system, it transitions cleanly into the 90-day BUILD phase.
Clinical Inquiry: The Strategic Sprint
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A Strategic Sprint requires a committed core leadership team and access to existing performance data. It is designed for $5M–$100M firms that need to resolve a specific strategic bottleneck or align on a high-stakes decision within a compressed timeframe.
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Unlike long-term advisory, a Sprint is a time-boxed, high-intensity facilitation process. It focuses on "Outcome over Audit," moving from problem identification to an actionable decision-making framework in days, not months.
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The outputs are a validated Action Roadmap and a Decision Logic document that empowers your team to execute immediately without further oversight.
The Output: Your Strategic Clarity Packet
At the “finish line” of Sprint, you receive a high-density clinical artifact containing:
Strategic Problem Statement: The crisp, measurable anchor for your strategy.
Possibility Set: 3–4 distinct, real-world choices for the firm’s future.
WWHTBT Logic Map: The "Logic of Choice" and a prioritized list of uncertainties.
Business Model Canvas (v1): The first model of how value works under the new choices.
Validation Signal Summary: Evidence-based markers of what the market is telling you.
One-Page CEO Summary: The narrative tool for immediate leadership alignment.
Ideal For:
The New CEO: To quickly identify "Strategy Debt" and available paths.
Teams in Circular Debates: To replace subjective opinions with clinical logic
Firms Facing a Decision Window: When you need a clear, evidence-based view of choices—fast.