What It Is

You have an idea. A new campaign. A career site that needs rethinking. A strategy for filling a critical role. A program that could change how your company attracts talent. You know it's good — but getting leadership to see that is a different challenge entirely.

This tool helps you make that case. It works with you to develop your thinking, find the gaps, and then write a tight strategy brief — the kind a senior leader can read in three minutes and know exactly what's being proposed, what it costs, and what you're asking them to decide.

It's not a template you fill out. It's a conversation that ends with something you can send.

When to Use It

Come here when you have an initiative that needs leadership buy-in — and you need to make the case clearly and quickly. That includes:

• A new campaign or program you want to launch and need budget or approval for
• A strategic response to a challenge — a hard-to-fill role, a new market, a competitor threat
• A significant change to something that already exists — career site, EVP, content strategy, hiring process
• Any situation where you're walking into a room with a CHRO, CFO, or COO and need them to understand your thinking fast

If it needs buy-in from someone senior, it probably needs a brief.

How to Get the Most Out of It

Start with what you have, not what you wish you had. You don't need to arrive with a polished idea. The tool is designed to help you develop your thinking — it will ask questions along the way to help surface what's missing and sharpen what's there.

Expect to be pushed on the business case. The most common gap in strategy briefs is the cost of doing nothing. The tool will ask you about it, because a leader needs to see both sides — what it costs to act and what it costs to stay still. If you don't have a hard number, a logical estimate is fine.

Be specific wherever you can. Vague initiatives produce vague briefs. The more concrete you can be about what you're proposing, what it costs, and what success looks like, the sharper the brief will be.

Take the pressure test if you have time. After the brief is written, the tool can walk you through the hard questions a skeptical CFO or COO might ask — so you're not hearing them for the first time in the room. It's worth the extra ten minutes.

What You'll Get

A tight, executive-ready strategy memo — typically 300 to 500 words — structured around:

• What's happening and why it matters now
• What you're proposing to do about it
• What it costs to act
• What it costs to do nothing
• A clear recommendation and specific ask

No deck. No lengthy report. Just the argument, made as cleanly and directly as possible.

To Start

Describe what you're working on — as roughly or as specifically as you'd like:

"I want to make the case for rebuilding our careers site because..."

"We have a critical role we've been trying to fill for four months and I think we need a different approach..."

"I want to pitch a full employer brand campaign for the year and I need leadership to fund it..."

The tool will ask a few questions, help you develop the thinking, and then write the brief.

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