Strategy isn’t a layer. It’s a stack.
Most companies score a 9 at one layer of their strategy stack and a 3 at another. The problem isn’t the scores. It’s the misalignment between them. Score the six layers honestly, watch the stack reshape, and the diagnosis lands before you finish reading it.
The thesis (and the patterns)
The strategy stack: six layers, not one.
Most strategic problems aren’t about being bad at strategy. Instead, they’re about being uneven at it. For example, a company can have excellent positioning sitting on top of a mediocre identity, propped up by a measurement function that doesn’t track any of it. The stack works, but only as well as its narrowest layer, and the narrowest layer is doing all the strategic damage.
The X-Ray makes that gap in strategy alignment legible. Drag the sliders and watch the shape, because the shape is the diagnosis.
The seven shapes we keep seeing
- Aligned and low (coherent < 4 avg). Consistent but undersized. Pick one layer and lift it dramatically.
- Aligned and shipping (coherent 4–7 avg). Most B2B companies never get here. Maintain the line.
- Aligned and amplifying (coherent ≥ 7 avg). What compounding looks like.
- Top-heavy. Vision-led, execution-lagging. Buyers never see the strategy.
- Bottom-heavy. Performance-led. Pipeline moves, yet the brand doesn’t.
- Hourglass. Strong top, strong bottom, starved middle. Usually a rebrand that didn’t reach the product surface.
- Lopsided. One layer dramatically lower than the rest. That layer is dragging the stack, so the fix is concentrated.
How the maths works
- Avg score = simple mean across the six layers.
- Spread = max layer − min layer. A spread of 4+ usually means the misalignment is the strategic problem, regardless of the scores.
- Shape classification compares the top three (positioning, narrative, identity) to the bottom three (surface, channels, measurement), and also checks for any single layer dragging.