Strategy has no shared yardstick. We built one.
Square³ maps strategy, operating-model and planning documents against a shared business ontology, and hands back a structured brief in the same categories our network of practitioners uses to pressure-test leadership teams.
Most strategy work never touches the same yardstick twice.
Every advisor, board pack and planning cycle tends to invent its own language for the same handful of problems. That makes good judgement hard to compare, combine, or hand on — here's what changes when it isn't.
Fragmented judgement
A strong point in one deck rarely survives translation into the next. Mapped to a shared ontology, it survives — and compounds — instead of staying local to the room it was made in.
No shared structure
Strategy, operating model, market position, talent, financial resilience, governance — most reviews touch all of these but rarely name them. Naming them is what surfaces the gaps.
Knowledge that doesn't compound
Insight often leaves when the person who had it does. A shared structure is the one thing that doesn't walk out the door — that's the problem Square³ fixes first.
Core Dimensions of Strategy-as-Practice
Square³'s ontology draws on the strategy-as-practice tradition, which treats strategy as something people do, not just a document leadership signs off. Three lenses hold that view together.
Practices
The shared routines, tools, discursive norms, frameworks, and technologies — like PowerPoint, workshops, and spreadsheets — used to do strategy work.
Practitioners
The actors involved in creating, shaping, and executing strategy — not just top executives or CEOs, but middle managers, outside consultants, board members, and analysts.
Praxis
The actual stream of activity, behaviour, and social-relational processes where the work of strategy gets done over time.
Six domains. Every assessment is measured against all of them.
This is the actual ontology, not a marketing summary of it — the same structure the Assess tool below scores every document against.
Does intent match what's funded?
How clearly stated ambition connects to what the organisation actually funds, staffs and measures.
Can the structure carry it?
Whether decision rights and workflows described can actually carry the strategy, not just illustrate it.
Does the leader's story survive the retelling?
Whether the reason customers choose you means the same thing to leadership, to managers, and to the person closing the sale.
Does it outlast this leadership cycle?
Whether the people and behaviours described can sustain the plan past the people currently driving it.
Who notices when financial reality bites?
Whether managers and employees are positioned to notice before a stated assumption quietly stops holding true.
Does oversight keep pace?
Whether reporting and risk visibility keep up with the pace of change the plan describes.
From document to structured guidance, in three steps.
This is a real sequence, not a marketing device — each step depends on the one before it.
Upload
Add a strategy note, operating-model paper, board pack or plan. In this preview, only the file's name, size and type ever leave your device — not its contents.
Map to the ontology
Square³ places what it finds against the six domains above — the same framework, every time.
Receive the brief
You get a structured set of observations and recommendations, tagged by category and confidence — built to be challenged and acted on, not filed away.
Try it on one of your own documents.
Free preview: one document, mapped against all six domains above. Upgrade to Pro to assess a full set — a strategy deck, an operating model and a board pack — in a single pass.
Drop documents here or click to browse
PDF, DOCX, XLSX, TXT · metadata analysed only, in this preview
Start free. Scale to a full engagement.
£0 / forever
For testing the ontology against a single document before committing to more.
- One document per assessment
- All six ontology domains
- Confidence-scored guidance
- No account required
£0 / forever, for now
For assessing a full document set — strategy, operating model and plan — in one pass.
- Unlimited documents per assessment
- Priority access to new ontology domains
- Exportable briefs (coming soon)
- Everything in Free
Running a transformation and want Square³'s ontology applied directly by our practitioners? Get in touch about an engagement.
A collaborative initiative for leaders, thinkers and change-makers in business strategy.
Square³ began as a thought initiative: a small group of practitioners comparing notes on what actually works in business strategy, and tired of starting from zero on every engagement.
The ontology is that comparison, written down and made structured. It keeps changing shape with every engagement — what stays fixed is the discipline of mapping judgement to structure before acting.
Bring one document. See what a shared structure finds.
Free, no account, mapped against all six domains — or get in touch if you're ready for the full engagement.