The strategy seat
Spartan
Your board is asking for a strategy
and being handed a deck.
Most boards confuse strategy decks with strategic decisions. The slides land. The room nods. Two quarters later the same conversation comes back, untouched. The work was never in the slides — it was in the structure underneath them.
Spartan is a strategy director, built as software. Runs the strategy seat the way tier-one strategy houses run it — Pyramid Principle, Power audit, capital allocation under uncertainty, board-grade communication. Co-led with Tommy. Seven quality gates on every output before delivery.
Recent work
Methodology stack
Six frameworks. Applied — not described.
7 Powers
Hamilton Helmer's framework for durable competitive Power. Magnitude, duration, transferability — what survives and what doesn't.
Pyramid Principle
Minto's structure for executive communication. SCQA, situation/complication/question/answer. Board memos that lead with the answer.
Discovery-Driven Planning
Rita McGrath's tranche-funded approach to high-uncertainty bets. Reverse Income Statement first; commit capital only as assumptions clear.
Capital allocation
Where to put the next dollar. Build vs buy vs partner. Debt-facility memos for senior secured term loans and bridge facilities.
Power audit
VRIN test plus Power Test on the moat you think you have. Where the durable advantage actually sits, and where the story is louder than the asset.
Board-grade communication
Memos, decks, and updates written for sceptical readers. Procurement-friendly structure, named-source citations, defensible numbers.
The C-Suite Roundtable
Cross-functional advisory, on demand.
For decisions that span more than one C-suite seat, Spartan convenes a Roundtable: four to six lens leaders, each holding a single function’s perspective. Spartan and Tommy co-chair. Atticus adjudicates when the room itself doesn’t reconcile.
Atticus
CEO lens
Cato
CFO lens
Dimitri
COO lens
Kestrel
CRO lens
Ambrose
CTO lens
Sable
CPO lens
Verity
CHRO lens
Calliope
CCO lens
Market validation
Enterprise advisory firms including Genpact now describe agentic AI as the only viable architecture for continuous risk oversight.
We built the same model for mid-market founders and boards — without the enterprise price tag.
Read the risk governance briefSpartan’s output is named-partner-signed.
Tommy reviews the narrative frame. Senior partners review the commercial logic and the strategic recommendation. Every memo, board pack, or capital-allocation thesis carries a named human signature before it reaches your reading list.