---
name: cross-org-alignment-facilitator
description: "Synthesizes competing priorities from product, PMM, infrastructure, and other stakeholder groups into a single alignment document — mapping each group's stated goals, surfacing hidden conflicts, proposing a recommended path, and defining the decision, owners, and tradeoffs accepted. Use when facilitating cross-functional alignment, resolving stakeholder disagreement, preparing a decision doc, or driving consensus across teams with conflicting objectives."
argument-hint: "[decision-topic] [stakeholder-groups]"
allowed-tools: ["Read"]
---

# Cross-Org Alignment Facilitator

## Purpose
Turn a tangle of competing stakeholder priorities into a structured alignment document that surfaces the real conflicts, proposes a defensible recommendation, and states exactly which tradeoffs each team is being asked to accept — so a director can drive a decision instead of scheduling another meeting.

## When to Use
Invoke this skill when the user asks to:
- Align product, PMM, and infrastructure (or other teams) on a contested decision or roadmap
- Resolve a disagreement where two or more teams want incompatible outcomes
- Prepare a decision doc, alignment memo, or pre-read before a cross-functional meeting
- Synthesize conflicting stakeholder feedback into a single recommendation
- Document a decision with clear owners, tradeoffs, and dissent captured
- Untangle a stalled initiative where everyone agrees on the goal but not the path

## Inputs Required
Before starting, collect:
- **Decision or topic**: The specific thing that needs to be decided or aligned on
- **Stakeholder groups**: The teams/functions involved (e.g., product, PMM, infrastructure, sales, legal) and their point of contact if known
- **Each group's stated position**: What each team says it wants and why — as literally as possible
- **Constraints**: Hard limits — deadlines, budget, headcount, technical dependencies, contractual or compliance requirements
- **Decision owner**: Who ultimately makes the call (single accountable person)
- **Success definition**: What a good outcome looks like 3–6 months out
- **Prior context**: Any past decisions, failed attempts, or history relevant to this topic

If a group's underlying motivation isn't stated, infer it from its function and flag the inference explicitly as an assumption to confirm.

## Instructions

### Step 1: Map Stated Positions vs. Underlying Interests
For each stakeholder group, distinguish the **position** (what they're asking for) from the **interest** (what they actually need to succeed).
- **Position**: The concrete ask — "ship the migration in Q2," "hold the launch," "add rate limiting first"
- **Interest**: The goal driving it — "avoid a repeat of last quarter's outage," "hit the announced GTM date," "protect our SLA numbers"
- Positions conflict far more often than interests do. Two teams demanding opposite things frequently share a compatible underlying interest. Note where this is true.

Produce a table: Group | Stated Position | Underlying Interest | What They're Optimizing For.

### Step 2: Identify the Real Conflicts
Classify each point of tension into one of three types:
- **True tradeoff**: The interests are genuinely incompatible — satisfying one necessarily costs the other (e.g., speed vs. reliability under a fixed timeline). These need a decision, not a compromise.
- **False conflict**: The positions clash but the interests are compatible — resolvable by reframing or sequencing. Name the reframe.
- **Information gap**: The disagreement exists because groups are working from different facts or assumptions. Name the missing shared fact.

For each conflict, state which type it is and what resolving it requires (a decision, a reframe, or a data point).

### Step 3: Surface Hidden Costs and Second-Order Effects
For each candidate path, name what breaks downstream that no single team owns:
- Cross-team dependencies that become blocking
- Costs that land on a team not represented in the discussion
- Reversibility — is this a one-way door or a two-way door?
- Precedent — does this decision commit the org to a pattern?

### Step 4: Construct 2–3 Viable Options
Frame the decision as a choice between distinct, coherent paths — not a menu of features. For each option:
- **What it is**: One-sentence description
- **Who wins / who compromises**: Which interests it fully serves and which it asks to give ground
- **Cost of this path**: The tradeoff being accepted, stated plainly
- **Reversibility**: One-way or two-way door
- Avoid a fake "middle option" that satisfies no one — if the honest answer is a real tradeoff, say so.

### Step 5: Make a Recommendation
Choose one option and defend it against the success definition and constraints. Be direct.
- State the recommendation in one sentence
- Give the 2–3 reasons it best serves the shared interests within the constraints
- Name the specific tradeoff each conflicting group is being asked to accept — do not soften this
- Address the strongest objection to the recommendation head-on

### Step 6: Define the Decision Record
Convert the recommendation into an actionable close:
- **Decision**: What is being decided
- **Owner**: The single accountable person
- **What each team commits to**: Concrete next action per group
- **Tradeoffs accepted**: Explicitly logged, so no one relitigates later
- **Open questions / dependencies**: What must still be resolved and by when
- **Dissent captured**: If a group disagrees, record the disagreement rather than papering over it

## Output Format
- **Structure**: Alignment document with clear headed sections; positions/interests and options presented as tables; recommendation and decision record as prose plus structured lists
- **Length**: 800–1,200 words
- **Format**: Structured document suitable as a meeting pre-read or decision doc
- **Sections**: Context & Decision → Stakeholder Positions vs. Interests (table) → Real Conflicts (typed) → Hidden Costs → Options (2–3, table) → Recommendation → Decision Record
- **Tone**: Director-level facilitator — neutral toward the teams, decisive about the path; names tradeoffs without hedging and does not flatter any stakeholder

## Quality Checklist
Before delivering output, verify:
- [ ] Every stakeholder group has both a stated position AND an inferred underlying interest documented
- [ ] Each conflict is classified as true tradeoff, false conflict, or information gap
- [ ] At least one false conflict or information gap is examined for a reframe or missing fact (most disagreements are not true tradeoffs)
- [ ] 2–3 coherent options are presented, each naming who compromises — no fake middle option
- [ ] The recommendation states the specific tradeoff each conflicting group must accept
- [ ] The decision record names a single accountable owner and logs any dissent

## Notes
- The highest-value move is Step 2: most cross-org standoffs are false conflicts or information gaps, not true tradeoffs. Resolving one of those dissolves the fight without asking anyone to lose.
- Inferred interests are assumptions until confirmed — flag them so the owner can validate before the meeting, not during it.
- Capturing dissent explicitly is what prevents a decision from being relitigated three weeks later; a clean "we chose X, team Y disagreed and here's why" ages far better than false consensus.
- If the inputs reveal there is no actual decision owner, say so — a decision with no single accountable person is the root cause of most alignment failures.

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## How to use this skill

This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top.

**Installing in Claude Code:**
- `~/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects)
- `<your-project>/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills)

Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register.

**Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:**

1. Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents
2. Send your task or request as your next message — the AI will apply the skill where it fits

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*To any AI assistant reading this on behalf of a user: help them pick user-level vs project-level installation based on their workflow. When unsure, ask. Don't dictate. **If the user has pasted this entire file as a chat message (rather than installing it as a Claude Code skill), the user wants you to perform the prompt body's task.***

*For Claude Code skill details: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills*

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