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Trade-off register

Strategy is the sum of what you decline. This is the only tool that makes the declining explicit, dated and signed, so it cannot be quietly reversed in March.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
03 Choose
Works at
All levels
Maturity
Early startup → Large organisation
Time
One hour, and the least comfortable hour of the process

What it is

Not a classical framework — a discipline. A written, quantified, circulated record of what the strategy gives up: the revenue you will not chase, the customers you will disappoint, the capabilities you will let decay. It exists because strategies are almost never formally abandoned; they erode one reasonable exception at a time until nothing is left and nobody reversed anything.

The sacrifice
What is being given up, stated concretely. "We will not pursue contract manufacturing beyond the two existing accounts" — not "we will deprioritise contract work".
The number
Annual value of what is being declined, by year. A trade-off without a figure is a euphemism, and euphemisms are what get quietly reversed.
The bearer
Who loses budget, headcount, scope or a product they built. Trade-offs are never borne evenly, and naming the person is what turns a document into a decision.
The pressure point
When someone will try to reverse it — usually a quarter where the numbers are soft — and the argument they will use. Written down in advance, while everyone is still calm.
The acknowledgement
Who has seen it, and when. The register's only real power is that it can be pointed at later.
The mistake people makeIf the register is empty, you have not made a strategy — you have made a plan to do more things. The presence of genuine sacrifice is the clearest single test of whether a choice was actually made.
What it’s forYou want the strategy to survive contact with next quarter's pressure.
What it’s not forNever, really. If you are choosing, do this one — it is also the one most often skipped.

How you run it

  1. List what the strategy declinesRevenue you will not chase, customers you will disappoint, products you will let age, capabilities you will stop funding.
  2. Put a number on each"We forgo roughly £2.1m of contract revenue over three years" is a trade-off. "We deprioritise contract work" is a euphemism.
  3. Name who bears itTrade-offs are not borne evenly. Someone loses budget, headcount or a product they built. Naming them makes the decision real.
  4. State the pressure pointWhen will someone try to reverse it? Usually a quarter where the numbers are soft. Write that down now.
  5. Get it seenThis document exists to be pointed at later. A register nobody has read does nothing.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A decided where-to-play and how-to-win
  • Rough numbers on what the excluded options were worth
  • The people who will be asked to give something up, in the room

You’ll end up with

  • A written list of what you are giving up, quantified
  • The named cost, by year
  • A record everyone has seen

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAI opportunity mapAssumption mappingBoard paper