Purpose
Turn ambiguous signals about an internal program — soft adoption, unclear returns, mixed stakeholder sentiment — into a defensible scale/pivot/sunset recommendation, backed by a fully-loaded ROI model and a five-dimension evidence score. Solves the "we've been running this for two years and nobody knows if it's working" problem.
When to Use
Invoke this skill when the user asks to:
- Decide whether to scale, restructure, or shut down an internal program
- Justify a program's budget or headcount in a planning cycle
- Run an annual or quarterly program portfolio review
- Assess whether a pilot should graduate to a permanent program
- Build a case to sunset a program that's lost momentum
- Compare the ROI of an internal initiative against its ongoing cost
Inputs Required
Before starting, collect:
- Program description: What the program does and the problem it was created to solve
- Original goals: The stated objectives and success metrics when the program launched
- Cost data: Headcount time, tooling, budget, and any indirect costs — annualized
- Impact/performance data: Metrics tied to the goals — usage, output, cycle-time savings, revenue, cost avoidance, whatever exists
- Adoption signals: Who uses it, how consistently, and how that's trended over time
- Stakeholder feedback: Sentiment from sponsors, users, and adjacent teams — quotes, survey scores, or your summary
- Program age & stage: How long it's been running and whether it's a pilot or established program
If hard impact data is missing, proceed using adoption and stakeholder signals as proxies and flag the evidence gap explicitly in the output.
Instructions
Step 1: Reconstruct the Original Thesis
State, in one or two sentences, what this program was supposed to achieve and how it was supposed to pay off. Separate the stated goal from the implied value driver (e.g., stated: "run a mentorship program"; implied driver: "reduce regretted attrition among high-performers"). All later scoring is measured against the value driver, not the activity.
Step 2: Build the Fully-Loaded Cost Model
Calculate annualized total cost of ownership. Do not accept the surface budget number.
- Direct costs: Budget, tooling, licenses, vendors
- Labor costs: Headcount time × loaded rate (include the "hidden" hours of participants, not just the program owner)
- Opportunity cost: What the involved people would otherwise be doing — note it qualitatively if not quantifiable
- Present a single annualized TCO figure with the components broken out.
Step 3: Quantify Impact (or the Best Available Proxy)
Translate the impact data into value in the same units as cost where possible (dollars, hours saved, risk reduced).
- If impact is directly measurable: state the annualized value and the calculation.
- If impact is a proxy (adoption, satisfaction, cycle time): state the proxy, why it's a reasonable stand-in, and the confidence level.
- Compute ROI: (Annualized value − TCO) / TCO, expressed as a ratio or percentage. If value can't be dollarized, produce a directional ROI verdict (clearly positive / breakeven / clearly negative) and explain the basis.
Step 4: Score the Program Across Five Dimensions
Score each dimension 1–5 with a one-line justification tied to the input data:
- Return — Does measured or proxied value exceed cost?
- Adoption — Is usage broad, consistent, and trending up?
- Strategic fit — Does it still serve a current company priority (not just the priority it launched for)?
- Stakeholder support — Do sponsors and users actively defend it, or merely tolerate it?
- Momentum & trajectory — Is the program improving, plateaued, or declining over time?
Produce a total out of 25 and note which dimension is the weakest link.
Step 5: Map Score to Recommendation
Apply the decision logic, then override only with explicit reasoning:
- SCALE (strong Return + Adoption, score ≥ 19): The program works and demand is unmet. Invest to expand reach or depth.
- PIVOT (mixed signals, strong Strategic Fit but weak Return or Adoption, score 12–18): The underlying need is real but the current form isn't delivering. Restructure the model, not the mission.
- SUNSET (weak Return + weak Momentum, or Strategic Fit ≤ 2, score ≤ 11): The value driver is gone, cost outweighs return, or the org has moved on. Wind down cleanly.
- State the recommendation in one bolded sentence before elaborating.
Step 6: Risk & Second-Order Effects
Identify what breaks if the recommendation is executed:
- For SCALE: capacity limits, quality dilution, cost curve at scale
- For PIVOT: change fatigue, transition cost, whether the new form is testable
- For SUNSET: stakeholder fallout, lost institutional knowledge, whether the underlying need reappears elsewhere Name the single biggest risk and a mitigation for it.
Step 7: 90-Day Action Plan
Translate the recommendation into concrete moves:
- Days 0–30: Immediate actions (communicate, instrument, secure resources, or begin wind-down)
- Days 31–60: Structural changes (expand, redesign, or transition ownership)
- Days 61–90: Validation — the specific metric or signal that confirms the decision was right
- Name the decision owner and the checkpoint date for the next review.
Output Format
- Structure: Executive verdict first (recommendation + one-paragraph rationale), then the full analysis
- Length: 900–1,300 words
- Format: Structured document — prose for reasoning, a cost table for TCO, a scored table for the five dimensions, numbered plan for the 90-day roadmap
- Sections: Executive Verdict → Program Thesis → Cost Model (table) → Impact & ROI → Five-Dimension Scorecard (table) → Recommendation Rationale → Risks & Second-Order Effects → 90-Day Action Plan
- Tone: Chief of staff briefing a leadership team — decisive, evidence-anchored, unsentimental about killing things that don't work
Quality Checklist
Before delivering output, verify:
- [ ] The recommendation is stated as one of exactly three verdicts: SCALE, PIVOT, or SUNSET — no hedging
- [ ] TCO includes labor and hidden participant time, not just the surface budget line
- [ ] All five dimensions are scored 1–5 with a data-tied justification and a total out of 25
- [ ] The recommendation is consistent with the score, or the override is explicitly reasoned
- [ ] ROI is expressed numerically when data allows, or given a directional verdict with stated basis when it doesn't
- [ ] The 90-day plan includes a specific validation signal and a named review checkpoint
- [ ] Any missing hard-impact data is flagged as an evidence gap rather than silently ignored
Notes
- The most common error in program reviews is measuring the activity ("we ran 40 sessions") instead of the value driver ("attrition dropped 3 points"). Always score against the driver.
- Beware sunk-cost momentum: age and prior investment are not reasons to keep a program — they raise the bar for what "working" must look like now.
- PIVOT is the right call more often than people expect when Strategic Fit is high but execution is weak — the need is real, the form is wrong.
- When stakeholder sentiment and hard data conflict, weight the data for the ROI verdict but treat strong sponsor support as a real asset in the risk assessment — programs with champions survive transitions that data-strong programs without them do not.
How to use this skill
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