Perspective Reviews — Stress-Testing Strategy Through Functional Lenses
Part 2 showed how to detect misalignment across five lenses. But detection raises a harder question: is this finding a real problem, or an acceptable trade-off? Answering that requires perspectives beyond the strategy's authors.
Leadership teams exist partly for this reason — each member stress-tests strategic choices through their functional expertise. The CFO asks about unit economics. The CTO asks about technical feasibility. The General Counsel asks about regulatory exposure.
The problem is that perspectives depend on who is in the room. Missing roles mean missing lenses. A startup without a CFO never gets the financial scrutiny. A team without legal counsel never surfaces regulatory risk. The analytical coverage of any strategy is bounded by the functional composition of the team evaluating it.
AI co-working transforms this constraint. Every strategy can be stress-tested through every functional lens, regardless of team composition. Not as a replacement for functional leadership — but as a guarantee that no analytical frame goes unexamined.
The "Missing CFO" Problem
Solo founders do not have eight functional leaders. They have two or three people wearing multiple hats, making decisions that span domains where they lack deep expertise. The founder who is brilliant at product may have blind spots in finance. The technical co-founder may not think about regulatory exposure until it becomes a crisis.
This is not a character flaw. It is a structural limitation. Assumption debt accumulates silently in every domain where functional scrutiny is absent. The assumptions are not wrong because anyone is incompetent — they are untested because nobody with the right lens is asking the right questions.
Perspective reviews give every organisation access to functional scrutiny they could not otherwise afford. A five-person startup gets the same breadth of analytical coverage as a company with a full C-suite. The AI generates the questions. The human makes the call.
Eight Standard Perspectives
Each perspective represents a functional lens with specific concerns, analytical frames, and failure modes. Together they provide comprehensive coverage of the domains where strategic assumptions tend to hide.
Finance / CFO
Interrogates: Unit economics, runway implications, ROI assumptions, capital allocation trade-offs.
Surfaces: Hidden costs, unrealistic revenue assumptions, cash flow timing risks.
Technology / CTO
Interrogates: Technical feasibility, architecture implications, technical debt, build vs buy decisions.
Surfaces: Timeline risks, infrastructure dependencies, scalability constraints.
Legal / General Counsel
Interrogates: Regulatory exposure, compliance requirements, IP implications, contractual liability.
Surfaces: Regulatory blockers, jurisdictional complexity, unaddressed liability.
Marketing / CMO
Interrogates: Positioning coherence, brand implications, go-to-market feasibility, channel strategy.
Surfaces: Positioning conflicts, channel saturation, messaging inconsistency.
Operations / COO
Interrogates: Execution feasibility, process implications, resource requirements, operational complexity.
Surfaces: Capacity constraints, process bottlenecks, dependency chains.
People / CHRO
Interrogates: Talent requirements, culture implications, organizational capability, team capacity.
Surfaces: Capability gaps, retention risks, culture-strategy misfit.
Customer / CCO
Interrogates: Customer impact, experience implications, adoption barriers, value delivery.
Surfaces: Value proposition gaps, churn triggers, adoption friction.
Risk / CRO
Interrogates: Aggregate risk exposure, scenario analysis, concentration risks, cascading failures.
Surfaces: Compounding risks, worst-case scenarios, correlated exposures.
How Perspective Reviews Work
Not every strategy needs every perspective. A purely internal process improvement may not require legal review. A branding initiative may not need deep technical analysis. Selecting which lenses matter is part of the discipline — and avoiding unnecessary perspectives prevents analysis paralysis.
The process follows a consistent pattern. AI generates perspective analysis based on the full strategic context — not just the strategy being reviewed, but the foundation it rests on, the assumptions it depends on, and the initiatives it governs. The analysis is specific, not generic, because it draws from structured strategic data rather than abstract prompts.
The human then validates each finding. Is this a real concern or a theoretical worry? Does it require action now, monitoring over time, or conscious acceptance of the risk? This triage is where human judgment is irreplaceable — the AI can surface that a regulatory risk exists, but only the human knows whether the organisation's risk appetite accommodates it.
Validated findings route into the system. A financial concern becomes a new assumption to track. A technical risk becomes a first-class risk object. An operational constraint updates initiative scope. A confirmed strength becomes increased confidence in a strategic bet. Nothing is lost. Everything is traceable.
Co-Working in Perspective Reviews
Perspective reviews are a clear example of the co-working model that runs through the Stratafy methodology. The AI generates candidate concerns from each functional perspective, drawing on the full strategic context available through MCP. The human triages those concerns — separating real from theoretical, urgent from deferrable, actionable from acceptable.
Intelligence Triage applies here. Some findings are valid but premature — a regulatory concern that matters only if you enter a specific market, or a scaling constraint that is irrelevant at current volumes. These are not dismissed. They are catalogued with their trigger conditions so the organisation knows when to revisit them.
The output feeds directly into the strategic architecture. Findings become assumptions in the assumption tracking system, risks in the risk register, or scope adjustments on initiatives. The perspective review is not a standalone exercise — it is a structured input to the living strategy.
AI Generates
- Candidate concerns from each functional lens
- Analysis grounded in full strategic context
- Cross-references between perspectives
- Suggested severity and routing
Human Validates
- Real concern vs theoretical worry
- Act now vs monitor vs consciously accept
- Organizational context the AI cannot see
- Final routing decision for each finding
When to Run Perspective Reviews
Perspective reviews are not continuous — they are triggered by specific strategic moments where functional scrutiny adds the most value.
Before Committing Significant Resources
New initiatives consuming meaningful budget, headcount, or leadership attention deserve functional scrutiny before the commitment is made.
When Evaluating a Strategic Pivot
Pivots change assumptions across every functional domain. A perspective review surfaces which assumptions break under the new direction.
During Quarterly Strategy Reviews
Regular cadence ensures perspectives are applied systematically, not only when someone thinks to ask.
When a Major Assumption Is Invalidated
A broken assumption ripples across functions. Perspective reviews trace the impact through each lens.
When Team Composition Changes
New leadership brings new lenses and loses old ones. A perspective review recalibrates the analytical coverage.
Connecting to the Methodology
Perspective reviews do not exist in isolation. They connect to and strengthen every other part of the methodology.
Findings feed into Part 5: Strategic Intelligence — perspective reviews are one of the primary sources of new assumptions, risks, and insights. They generate the raw material that the intelligence layer organises and tracks.
Reviews inform Part 4: Execution by surfacing feasibility concerns before resources are committed. An operations perspective that identifies a capacity constraint changes how an initiative is scoped. A technology perspective that reveals an infrastructure dependency changes the timeline.
Reviews complement Part 2: Strategic Alignment. Alignment checks structure — are the layers connected, are initiatives traceable to strategies? Perspective reviews check substance — given that the structure is sound, do the strategies actually hold up under functional scrutiny? Structure without substance is a well-organised path to the wrong destination.
See It in Action
Theory is useful. Seeing the output is better. Below is a real CFO perspective review generated through Stratafy's co-working process — a growth and consolidation strategy stress-tested through the Finance lens with structured findings and actionable recommendations.
CFO Perspective Review
STIR Collective Growth & Consolidation Strategy — rated 6.5/10. Seven critical gaps identified, four strengths validated, with a prioritised action stack from "this week" to "within 90 days."
Read the full review →See This in Stratafy
Perspective reviews in Stratafy are not documents — they are structured processes with full traceability from finding to action.
Configurable Perspectives
Perspective profiles define what each functional lens interrogates, what it prioritises, and what failure modes it watches for. Organisations can customise perspectives to match their industry and context.
AI-Generated Reviews
AI analysis draws from the full strategic context via MCP — foundation, strategies, initiatives, assumptions, and risks. Reviews are specific to your organisation, not generic checklists.
Findings Routing
Each validated finding is captured as an insight, assumption, or risk with full traceability. Nothing is lost in a meeting summary — every concern routes to its appropriate home in the strategic architecture.
Review History
Complete record of which perspectives were applied to which strategies, what was surfaced, and how findings were triaged. Over time, patterns emerge — which perspectives consistently surface real concerns, and which domains need more attention.