Facilitates the first step of a proven ideal-customer (ICP) method: gathering raw, honest, specific observations about what a company and product actually are — before any judgment about strengths or weaknesses. Walks the user through twelve unsparing question categories (what customers praise, the

Observations: The Raw Facts About Who You Actually Are Every ideal customer definition is derived from an honest accounting of who the company actually is — but "write down our strengths and weaknesses" is an impossible instruction. Nobody knows where to start, everyone rationalizes, and whether something even IS a strength depends on who's asking. So this method starts a level lower: raw observations, gathered through twelve detailed question categories, recorded vividly and specifically, and deliberately NOT judged. Classification comes later; this step gets the truth on the record. The mental model Why observations before strengths Whether a fact is a strength or a weakness is in the eye of the beholder: "inexpensive" is a strength to price conscious buyers and a weakness signal to serious ones; "one hundred features" is completeness to some and bloat to others. Judging too early also invites defense and rationalization, which kills honesty. So the procedure is: (1) generate raw facts — this skill; (2) distill facts into the attributes that matter; (3) classify each attribute — the next step. Trying to do all three at once produces the usual whiteboard of flattering vagueness. The outside consultant posture Generate facts as if you were an outside consultant hired to reverse engineer the company: What decisions has it made, even unintentionally? What must its strategy be, even if nobody wrote it down? You may observe behaviors and outcomes; you may NOT interrogate anyone about why they acted — asking why makes people unwittingly rationalize or mount a defense. This is discovery, not judgment. Public evidence is legitimate seed material When the company already operates and strangers already talk about it online, the outside consultant's first move is to go read what they say. Public reviews, social posts, forum threads, news articles, and the company's own marketing are real artifacts — checkable by channel and quote — so gathering them up front is not fabrication; it is exactly the reverse engineering this posture calls for. But seed is not verdict: a scraped review is a candidate observation, recorded in its own External Research section and then pressed and confirmed by the user (who alone has seen the private behaviors behind it) before it becomes a numbered observation. The research widens the aperture and pre loads the walk; it never replaces it. For a company with no product or no public presence yet, there is nothing to scan — skip it. Don't evaluate, don't blame, don't act The standing rule of the whole session. "Customers post screenshots of support wait times" must not become "so we should hire more support people" — maybe fast support isn't strategic; maybe the fix is documentation, chat, product design, or a different market segment. Now is not the time. Equally: no observation is anyone's fault . The moment the session turns evaluative, people stop telling the truth. Ideas for features, marketing campaigns, or fixes WILL surface — good; they go in a side list in the file, to be processed another time, and the session stays on task. Vivid and specific, or it isn't an observation "Support could be better" is a mood. "Customers post screenshots on Reddit of long ticket wait times" is an observation — it names a behavior, a channel, an artifact. Generic words (better, great, slow, many, some, quality) are interpreted differently by every reader and carry no evidence; every observation must contain the specific behavior, number, event, quote, or artifact that makes it checkable. "We love our customers" is banality; "any support rep can issue up to $500 in credits without approval" is a fact. When the user offers the mood, press for the incident behind it. Two common shapes to convert rather than reject: a personality self judgment ("I'm bad at saying no") becomes the company behavior it produces ("3 of 9 clients got out of scope work last quarter, ~60 hours unbilled"); a stakeholder's opinion ("my cofounder thinks our pricing is the problem") is recordable as a who said what fact, filed under the category its topic belongs to, never as a verdict. The twelve categories Each category comes with its scope deliberately widened — the parentheticals matter, because they pre empt the excuses people use to withhold: 1. Undeniable comparative strength. What do customers praise when they choose you despite your foibles? What does your product do so well even competitors admit it in their own sales calls? What can your team do that most teams cannot? (Whether it's hard to copy or not, whether anyone seems to care or not.) 2. Consistent complaints. What complaint have you heard so many times, in so many channels, you don't need data to know it's true? On what point does a competitor instantly win because you have no defense? What do people leave you over even while apologizing as they cancel? (Whether it's smart to react or not, whether it's intrinsic or competitor created.) 3. Proud of. What about the product or team are you especially proud of — great workmanship, "who we are," hard to do, or just fun? (Whether customers agree or not, whether there's data or not, whether it's an advantage or not.) 4. Head/tail differential. What distinguishes your most profitable customers from the least profitable? Not what the best have in common — most of that is common to everyone; the insight is in the differences . (Whether it was intentional or not, whether you think you should act on it or not.) 5. We wish / say we're great, but we're not. What do you claim to be great at, not because it's true, but because customers wish it were true — and so do you? (Whether or not it directly harms sales or retention.) 6. Customers advocate for. When customers genuinely brag about you — social media, private meetings — what do they highlight? What would even a disgruntled ex employee begrudgingly admit? (Whether you think they're exaggerating or not, whether the majority would agree or not.) 7. Clear and present existential threats. What is happening now, or has at least a 70% chance of happening within a few years, that would seriously disrupt the business — tank sales, trigger mass cancellations? (Whether you can do anything about it or not, whether it's your fault or not. Hold the 70% bar — otherwise every company lists twenty theoretical worries.) 8. Organizational capabilities. What does your org structure make easy or hard? Which decisions are fast and intelligent versus slow and overwrought? What do you execute with excellence, and what are you just not set up to do well? (Whether it was deliberate or not, whether it matches best practice or not, whether changing it feels feasible or not.) 9. Technical architecture and capabilities. What's easy to build because the architecture makes it easy, and what feels impossible no matter how important? What reliability, scale, or extensibility comes naturally, and what wobbles under load or needs constant heroics? Where does the architecture create real advantage, and where does it impose constraints you pretend are temporary but have been true for years? (Whether the architecture is "good" or not, whether customers see it or not.) 10. Envy of / constantly losing sales to competitors. What have you seen in other companies that you envy — things you feel in your bones are awesome but you don't have, especially if they cost you deals? (Whether you should adopt it, or must face that it isn't who you are.) 11. Philosophy. What do you believe in so much you'd honor it even if it lost customers, lost money, slowed you down, or meant firing talented people? What do you believe in your gut about great work, the organization you want, the impact you want? (Whether others agree or not, whether it's in vogue or not.) 12. Great ideas. What ideas keep recurring because of ingrained conviction — you would be proud of it, it would become a comparative strength, customers would advocate for it? (Whether customers are asking for it or not, whether there's objective evidence or not.) Vocabulary Observation (O1, O2, …) — one specific, checkable fact about the company, product, customers, or team, filed under a category. Category — one of the twelve question areas above; the walk's unit of progress. Side list — the parking lot in the file for action ideas that surface mid session; captured, never discussed now. Write storm — brainstorm alone in writing first, synthesize together after; the team mode input this skill processes. The facilitator's posture Be clear, not clever Write to be understood, not admired. The work here wrestles with hard concepts, and clever metaphors, wordplay, or cute turns of phrase make them harder to grasp, not easier. Say plainly what you mean. If a sentence reads more clearly without a flourish, cut the flourish. State the actual point rather than gesturing wittily at it. Restate references; never cite a bare token When you mention a numbered or lettered item to the user — K4, W2, O17, H3, and the like — add a few plain words on what it actually is ("K4 — the owner whose career rides on the site"). A bare token is unreadable to a human who saw it defined hours or days ago: the tag is for traceability, the gloss is for comprehension. Keep the tag for accuracy; always add the gloss. Elicit; never invent The observations must be the user's — this is their company, and only they (and their team) have seen the behaviors. Offer prompts within a category ("think of the last three customers who canceled — what did they say on the way out?"), never candidate observations with invented content. If the user is stuck on a category, offer two or three more specific sub questions from the category's own scope, then accept "nothing for this one" and move on — a thin category is honest; a fabricated entry is poison. And process, don't rubber stamp: when a team dump arrives, every observation still gets clarified and sharpened individually before it's recorded. Press mush into facts — gently, relentlessly When the user offers a vague answer ("our support is really good"), acknowledge it and ask for the evidence behind it: the last specific incident, the number, the quote, the channel, the artifact. A predefined way to run this press: if a devil's advocate interrogation skill is installed in the environment (for example Rude Q&A / asb rude qa , from the same author as this method), invoke it with this brief: attack these observations — find every entry that is generic, unfalsifiable, or flattering self deception rather than an observed behavior; demand the specific incident behind each; don't accept wishful or vague defenses. If no such skill is available, run that interrogation yourself, visibly. Timing: the per entry press happens inline, before anything is recorded; the batch attack is a closing sweep option over the whole draft. Either way, tone stays gentle, bar stays fixed: a generic observation is never recorded as is, however the user insists — there is always a specific version of a true observation, and your job is to keep asking until it surfaces. If pressing produces "well, actually we just say that," the entry belongs under category 5 — that's the exercise working. Deflect evaluation and action — every time Users will constantly slip into "so what we should do is…" and "that one's clearly a weakness." Park action ideas in the side list with one line and return to the walk. Decline classification with the reason: whether it's a strength or weakness depends on who's asking, and the next step has a rubric for exactly that call. Never let the session become a strategy meeting; the discipline is what makes the honesty possibl

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