Strategic Capability Assessment

How do you lead when pressure enters the room?

It's not about knowing strategy.
It's about being strategic.

Most leaders don't lack capability. They lack a clear view of the pattern that drives their decisions when complexity, ambiguity, and consequence collide.

The Strategic Capability Assessment is a short, story-driven diagnostic that surfaces that pattern, and gives you a precise read on where your strategic capability is strong, where it's drifting, and what to do about it.

~20 min
to complete
12
essential practices
4
story worlds
What you'll discover

Where your strategic capability is strong, and where it's drifting.

The assessment moves through a series of high-pressure scenes designed to bypass familiar assumptions. By the end, you'll have a clear, evidence-based read on the pattern beneath your decisions.

Your strategic archetype, the default leadership pattern that shapes how you decide under pressure.
Your scores across the 12 essential practices of Strategic Mastery, mapped to the four levels of capability.
The secondary pattern that overlays your archetype, the harder-to-see tendency that emerges only when the heat is on.
Your exposure to the three strategic risks, Control Bias, Moral Drift, and Detachment Under Pressure.
Where your biggest opportunity for growth sits, the practice most likely to unlock the next level of capability for you.
Four concrete next steps tailored to your archetype, small experiments you can run in the next seven days.
What it's based on

The Be More Strategic framework. Twelve practices. Four levels.

The Strategic Capability Assessment is calibrated against Charlie Curson's Be More Strategic framework, the same 12-Practice Strategic Mastery model used inside global organisations to build the capability to think clearly, decide well, and act with intent when it matters most.

Built on 25+ years of advisory work with more than 250 organisations across 30+ industries, the framework distils strategic capability into twelve practices, organised across four levels, from deepening self-awareness to scaling your impact.

25+
years building
strategic capability
250+
organisations across
30+ industries
12
essential practices
of strategic mastery
4
levels from awareness
to impact
L1
Deepen Self-Awareness
Understand yourself. Master your emotions. Embed reflective practice as habit, not event.
L2
Cultivate Open-Mindedness
Be curious. Listen deeply. Think critically before you conclude.
L3
Develop Strategic Capabilities
Unlock creativity. Manage uncertainty. Hold the long view.
L4
Scale Your Impact
Act decisively. Collaborate inclusively. Influence with credibility.
Choose your story

Four worlds. The same diagnostic underneath.

The assessment runs identically across all four story worlds, same 12 practices, same scoring, same archetypes. The story is the lens. Pick the one that pulls you in.

Click a card to choose your story, then hit Begin.
Sci-fi · The Coalition
The Strategic Force Trial
A galaxy after a long peace. A commander you must judge.
Cinematic space-opera prologue. Coalition courtrooms, a Tatooine interlude with a hermit, and a denouement that asks what kind of leader you really are.
Historical · 1969 Mission Control
Trajectory · Apollo 11
Houston. Three days to the Moon. The pressure system you have to navigate.
Set inside the Mission Operations Control Room before and during the launch, with Katherine Johnson as your quiet north star and a Flight Director as the system you have to read.
Historical · 1597 Korean Coast
Twelve Ships · Yi Sun-sin
Admiral. Twelve ships. A court that has already condemned you.
Walk in the boots of Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the days before Myeongnyang. A study in conviction, restraint, and the strategic mind in its rarest form.
Historical · 1880s New York
Filament · Lewis Latimer
A patent office. A drafting room. A reputation to make.
Step into Lewis Latimer's New York at the dawn of electric light, and the strategic choices that turned a draftsman's hand into one of the most consequential careers of the era.
Pick a story above to enable the Begin button.