The gap between what the leadership team thinks it knows and what is happening outside rarely surfaces on its own. The stress test runs four steps in sequence to make that gap visible: an intake, a data round, a plot round and a report. Below is what each step requires, what happens in it, where the time goes, and who needs to do something for it. For an explanation of the underlying idea: what it is.
You provide the sector, answers to a number of questions about the business model, and your key assumptions in your own words. Those assumptions are mapped onto a fixed assumptions taxonomy, so that they can later be compared to the assumptions of other participants and to the status the data round assigns to them.
The intake takes 60 to 90 minutes. This can be done in one go by one person, but it can also be divided: one half of the management team fills in the business model section, the other half the assumptions, or everyone does their own part at their own moment. There is no session in which this needs to happen jointly.
Here you provide nothing; this is the moment at which sector datasets, regulatory calendars and public competitive signals are consulted. For each strategic theme a card is created with an assessment, and each card carries a source and a date. That is not an editorial choice but a hard rule: a theme without a source and a date does not make it into the report. This keeps it traceable why a theme has been marked as urgent, and that is what makes the report usable at a leadership table instead of an opinion being placed on the table.
This step is machine work. Nothing is interpreted on the basis of a conversation; the card follows from the dataset.
Each participant separately scores the five axes of the maturity picture and their own assumptions. This happens online, each at their own moment, and no one sees another person's score before the round has closed. This is deliberately set up this way: as soon as someone sees a colleague's score before scoring themselves, exactly the difference that the stress test is meant to make visible disappears.
The time this takes per participant is limited, typically a quarter to half an hour, but the duration of the entire round depends on how many people take part and how quickly they find their moment. The more participants from the leadership team, the sharper the spread picture — but the round only closes once everyone who was invited has scored or has dropped out.
The report combines what was gathered in the previous steps: three to five urgent strategic themes with evidence, the maturity picture, the assumptions list with a status per assumption, and the spread picture between participants. Linked to this is a prioritised decision agenda, and the three possible outcomes are explained with the bridge to the work scan. As for form: the report is a document you take to your own meeting, not a presentation that is delivered. It contains no recommendation; the tool confronts the outside view with the internal self-plot and shows where they diverge, but what happens with that is up to the leadership team itself. More about what can be done with the outcome is on the page outcomes.
Here too: no work session, no interviews beforehand or afterwards from the tool itself. A guided session based on the spread picture only exists if you choose it yourself, with a partner, after the report.
Assumptions expire silently, without an announcement. Repeating the stress test — for example quarterly, linked to the assumptions clocks from route 1 — places the previous state next to the new state. This makes visible which assumptions have been reaffirmed, which have been weakened by new data, and which themes have shifted from urgent to stable or vice versa. The setup of intake, data round and plot round remains the same; only the outcome shifts, and that shift is precisely what becomes visible. Background on assumptions status and maturity can be found in the knowledge base.
A decision agenda with urgent themes is not the end of the translation step. Strategic themes only become reality once they land in tasks, hours and systems — and that is exactly where the work scan on ftetoai.com begins.
Stel uw vraag. Vaak zit de echte vraag een laag dieper — daar mag ik naar vragen.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.