S.L.A.V.O. - Strategic Lens for Action Validation and Outcomes

A decision-making framework for evaluating strategic initiatives at Bemeir.

Acronym

S.L.A.V.O. - Strategic Lens for Action Validation and Outcomes

This captures the essence of the framework: providing a strategic perspective (lens) to validate decisions and drive measurable outcomes through a structured scoring methodology.

Purpose

S.L.A.V.O. helps organizations make better decisions about which initiatives to pursue by:

  1. Quantifying resource requirements (People, Money, Time)
  2. Evaluating strategic alignment (Business Goals, ROI, ICP, Differentiation)
  3. Providing AI-powered analysis against organizational context
  4. Tracking decisions over time with full version history

Core Concepts

The Fish Tank

The “Fish Tank” represents your organization’s current state and constraints:

  • How big is our fish tank? - Available resources, capacity, runway
  • What does healthy look like? - Minimum thresholds for sustainability
  • What can we realistically take on? - Resource-aware decision making

Every initiative is evaluated in the context of the Fish Tank. A P1 initiative that exceeds your capacity is still not actionable.

Initiative Scoring

Each initiative receives two scores:

  1. PMT Score (1-5) - Resource efficiency (higher = less resources needed)
  2. Strategic Score (4-12) - Strategic value (higher = more aligned)

Combined into a Total Score (5-17) that maps to Priority Bands (P1-P5).

Priority Bands

BandScore RangeMeaning
P115-17Critical - Do this now
P212-14High priority - Schedule soon
P39-11Medium priority - Plan for later
P46-8Low priority - Nice to have
P55Backlog - Deprioritize or revisit

Key insight: An organization can only have a limited number of P1s. If everything is P1, nothing is.

The Three Screens

Screen 1: New Initiative Flow

Multi-step wizard to define and score a new initiative:

  1. Basic Info - Name + Description (Simon Sinek: Why, How, What)
  2. PMT Scoring - Rate resource requirements
  3. Strategic Factors - Rate strategic alignment
  4. Results - View scores, priority band, and AI analysis

Screen 2: Fish Tank Snapshot

Your organization’s current state:

  • Current cash, forecast, borrowing capacity
  • Team members, functions, utilization
  • Subjective assessment of business scale
  • Health indicators (minimum thresholds)

Screen 3: Initiative List

All saved initiatives with:

  • Sortable by Priority, Score, Name, Dates
  • Filterable by Priority Band
  • Click through to full detail view
  • Version history for each initiative

Technology

  • Framework: Astro 5 with React islands
  • Storage: MDX files committed via GitHub API
  • Versioning: Git history for all changes
  • AI: OpenAI for contextual analysis
  • Deployment: Cloudflare Pages