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The Strategic Tension Index

Seven signals that reveal conflicting forces and the risk of stalling in your project.

The cost of inaction

Ambitious projects rarely stop for technical reasons. They stop when decisions, investors, teams, the municipality and the place itself stop moving forward together: the project loses momentum, consumes capital and erodes the value of the asset.

In three minutes, see where yours stands.

Answer based on what is true today, not on what is planned. If in doubt, choose “Not yet”.

01
Rooted Concept

Can you explain, in one sentence, why this project only makes sense in this place?

Risk signal: A concept that could be anywhere competes on price and tends to generate local resistance. A concept born from the place gains legitimacy and uniqueness and supports premium price positioning.

Rooted Concept
02
Concept and Business Model

Does the business model support the concept as it stands, without having to dilute it to make the numbers work?

Risk signal: When the vision lives in the renders and not in the numbers, it clashes with execution: budget overruns, redesign cycles, delays and loss of asset value.

Concept and Business Model
03
Tested Assumptions

Have the assumptions the project depends on most (market, licensing, financing) already been tested?

Risk signal: What stays out of sight appears when capital is already committed and there is less room to respond. Decisions become harder, investor margins shrink and leadership's confidence in the project begins to wear down.

Tested Assumptions
04
Reading the Territory

Before the formal approval channels, have you already identified the informal interests, local sensitivities and municipal dynamics that may influence the project's path?

Risk signal: What is not read in the territory does not disappear: it comes back later as administrative obstacles, political resistance or community opposition. It prolongs decisions, ties up capital and increases the cost of delay.

Reading the Territory
05
A Shared Definition of Success

If you asked the investor, the operator and the architect what success means for this project, would they give the same answer?

Risk signal: When each party pursues its own success, energy goes into negotiating internal priorities instead of moving execution forward.

A Shared Definition of Success
06
Decision Sequence

Is it clear which decisions must be closed now, and which can wait without compromising the next stages?

Risk signal: Making decisions out of order causes duplicated work; deferring critical choices creates operational bottlenecks.

Decision Sequence
07
Who Decides

Does the project move forward without depending on a single person (founder, CEO or chair) to decide and unblock day-to-day issues?

Risk signal: When direction and decision criteria are concentrated in a single person, every critical question goes back to the top. Leadership becomes the main bottleneck, teams lose autonomy and execution becomes dependent on that person's availability.

Who Decides
0 of 7 signals answered

Answer all seven signals to see the result.

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