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Skills from A Smart Bear

Strengths & Weaknesses: Distill the facts into the attributes that matter

Convert your raw company observations into the few deep-truth attributes that matter — each tested for genericness and classified as strength, weakness, or deliberately both. Adapted from Chapter 2 of Hidden Multipliers: Carol Loves You for You.

Input
Your OBSERVATIONS.md of raw facts (O1, O2, …) — or a pile of observations you're ready to distill.
Output
A STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md: distilled attributes classified as strengths (S1, S2, …) and weaknesses (W1, W2, …), each citing the observations behind it.

What this is about

A pile of honest observations is not yet a strategy input. It is evidence that still needs a verdict. This skill runs two steps that turn it into one. The first step is distill. Many observations often point to one deeper truth. For example, "customers post screenshots of support wait times" becomes the attribute "slow tech support." A smaller set of strong attributes is easier to remember and act on. Each candidate attribute must pass the Opposite Test. If no successful company would ever claim the opposite ("we love our customers"), the attribute is too generic. It is not strategy. The skill does not record it.

The second step is classify. Here the book solves a problem: almost any attribute can be argued both ways. Whether something is a strength or a weakness depends on who you ask. So the skill uses a clear rubric to decide. An attribute is a strength if more than a third of the market sees it that way, or if some customers buy for it alone. An attribute is a weakness if more than a third of the market sees it that way, or if it makes the product impossible for some customers, who refuse for this reason alone. If both are true, the attribute is both. The skill records it twice and flags it, because a both-attribute marks a place where market segments disagree. A clear strategic choice is waiting there. If neither is true, nobody cares. The skill drops the attribute, but keeps a record of the decision, so you stop spending attention on it. The result is the exact chart that your keystones, deal-breakers, and finally your ideal customer come from.

Example invocation

You can invoke the skill like this:

/asb-carol-strengths Here's our OBSERVATIONS.md from the honest-look
exercise — 19 observations. Distill it down and tell me what we're
actually working with.

The skill proposes attributes one at a time. Each attribute cites the observations behind it. Each attribute is tested with the Opposite Test. You and the skill classify each attribute against the rubric. The skill records the results in STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md as you go.

One practical note: say where you are working. Name a directory, or point to your existing files, when you invoke the skill. The skill then keeps the method's files together in that location. If you do not say, the skill asks before it creates anything.

From the source

Two sources form the foundation of this skill:

  • Chapter 2 of Hidden Multipliers: Carol Loves You for You (sections "Distill Into Important Attributes" and "Classify Strengths and Weaknesses") — hiddenmultipliers.com. This chapter gives the merge-or-drop distillation method, the genericness trap, and the two-question classification rubric that this skill uses.
  • The "Opposite Test" — this is the genericness gate. A claim means something only if a successful company could reasonably claim the opposite.

Supporting sources each supply a piece of the mechanism: