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Path strategy · The Architect's Path · Advanced

Communicating Strategy

Winning approval is its own discipline — the 30-second answer, Ars Rhetorica, dramatic structure, the meeting before the meeting, and the Ask Deck that turns analysis into funded action.

Path strategy Advanced ⏱ 5 min read Complete

🎭 Analogy

Aristotle’s Poetics gave us the five-part plot — status quo, inciting incident, problem, battle, resolution. The Lion King is Hamlet; your funding request is a story too. Hewitt’s lesson: “you can use facts and logic, and be right, and still lose.” Analysis earns you the right to speak; rhetoric earns you the budget.

The 20 communication patterns turn analysis into funded action. They divide into approach patterns (mental models), templates (spreadsheets and slides), and decks (frameworks for executive requests) — all serving the two culminating artifacts, the Strategy Deck and the Ask Deck.

Approach: how to talk to power

  • 30-Second Answer — executives need direction. Give a simple declarative answer, then three high-level points (one slide, 30-pt font), then stop talking and let them drill down. The boss almost always wants one of three things: status, whether they need to help, or your recommendation. Avoid the cliché “it depends.”
  • Ars Rhetorica — Aristotle’s three appeals: Logos (charts, data, reasoning, probabilities), Ethos (credibility and trust — the basis of Google’s PageRank), and Pathos (emotion — for town halls and demos, not for a CIO’s check). Match the appeal to the room.
graph TD
ET["Ethos<br/>credibility"] -->|"underpins all"| MSG["The message"]
LO["Logos<br/>data and reasoning"] -->|"for a CIO's check"| MSG
PA["Pathos<br/>emotion"] -->|"for town halls and demos"| MSG
MSG -->|"match appeal to room"| WIN["Approval"]
  • Fait Accompli — handle the deciding meeting by holding the meeting before the meeting. People don’t dislike change; they dislike change imposed on them. Interview the most-affected stakeholders (include the grumblers), fold in their ideas, then credit them in the room to build an “echo chamber of support.” Be the “guide at their side,” not the “sage on the stage.”

⚠️ Logical fallacies to avoid

Watch for HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion — the blind-authority fallacy), blinding with science (burying execs in acronyms to seem unchallengeable; the antidote is genuine curiosity — “explain it to me like I’m 10”), ad hominem, affirming the consequent, and post hoc ergo propter hoc. Being right is not the same as winning.

Dramatic structure

The Ask Deck is a story in four stages:

graph LR
SQ["Establish the<br/>Status Quo"] --> II["Inciting Incident<br/>(what if we do nothing?)"]
II --> PL["The Plan<br/>(the 'therefore' moment)"]
PL --> SA["Shock and Awe<br/>(true brutal facts)"]
SA --> ASK["The Ask<br/>(ask for the decision)"]
  • Establish the Status Quo — common ground, shared goals, current-state architecture.
  • Create an Inciting Incident — show, with real data, what happens if you do nothing. The bad outcome always reduces to one of five stories: costs up / quality down; slower to market and competition wins; lose this revenue opportunity; lose these key customers; lose these key employees.
  • The Plan — the “therefore” moment: a one-sentence goal, changes across people/process/technology, and Directional Costing.
  • Shock and Awe — overwhelm with brutal but only true facts, then state your definition of done, how you’ll measure success, and the reporting structure.

🔑 Directional costing beats false precision

Technologists estimate badly (writing code is 33% of the work). Refuse single-number death-march estimates. Give a funnel with stage gates: Rough (±50%, a few days), Refined (±25%, a couple weeks), Realistic (±5–10%, after the architecture definition). Often the exec just wants to know “is it $1M or $10M?”

The Ask Deck

The deck that asks for money, built from a Ghost Deck (headlines only, no data yet — if the audience believed only the headlines, they’d have the whole story). Its structure:

  • The ask (first slide, written last) — one sentence of exactly what you want, with the number up front. Execs flip to the back anyway, so give it on slide one. Goal: a “yes” on slide one.
  • Imperil the hero — Shock and Awe; show the dire situation.
  • Let the data drive — objective data so any reasonable person reaches the same conclusion (logos).
  • Save the hero — the path forward / roadmap: how long, how much, who does the work.
  • The ask, again — explicitly ask for the decision; salespeople always ask for the sale.
  • Appendix — all the substantiating charts.

Size the main deck at 12–15 slides (never past 18). With this structure, Hewitt claims he has “never been told no.”

💡 Tell truth to power, like a Rented Brain

Pretend you’re an outside consultant who can speak truth to power — tell leaders what they need to hear, not what they want. And use a MergeSort Meeting to defeat groupthink: gather everyone’s independent lists first, then merge and prioritize them.

See also

When to use it — and when not

✅ Reach for it when

  • When you must ask an executive body for money and want a 'yes' on slide one.
  • When a cold or skeptical audience could derail your meeting.
  • When you need to structure a recommendation as a persuasive narrative, not a data dump.

⛔ Think twice when

  • When you lead with pathos for a decision that calls for logos (a CIO writing a check).
  • When you 'blind with science' to appear unchallengeable rather than to inform.
  • When you skip 'the meeting before the meeting' and let drama erupt in the room.
path-strategyWhat Is Technology Strategy?

Strategy is the art of creating power — technologists win funding by speaking the language of business, using proven patterns to analyze, create, and communicate a fundable course of action.

path-strategyAnalyzing Strategy

The analysis metapatterns — MECE, Logic Trees, and Hypothesis — plus the world-context frameworks PESTEL, Scenario Planning, Futures Funnel, and Backcasting that ground a strategy in reality.

path-elevatorCommunicating with the Organization

Architects close the gap between technical knowledge and decision makers by building a ramp not a cliff, asking the right questions, and treating the organization itself as a system to be understood.

Check your understanding

Score: 0 / 4

1. What is the structure of the '30-Second Answer'?

Executives are time-starved and need direction. Picture one slide — a headline plus three points in 30-pt font — then stop and let them choose what to drill into.

2. In Ars Rhetorica, which appeal is right for asking a CIO to approve a budget?

Pathos suits town halls and demos, not a CIO's check; that decision wants logos. Ethos (credibility, the basis of PageRank) underpins all of it — 'you can use facts and logic, be right, and still lose'.

3. What is the purpose of 'The Meeting Before the Meeting' (Fait Accompli)?

People don't dislike change; they dislike change imposed on them. Interview the most-affected stakeholders, fold in their ideas, then credit them in the room to create an 'echo chamber of support'.

4. How is the Ask Deck's first slide ('the ask') written?

Execs flip to the back for the number anyway, so give it up front. Hewitt claims that with the Dramatic Structure (status quo → inciting incident → plan → shock and awe) he has 'never been told no'.

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