Governance – Strategic Validity Management
Maintain the validity of your strategic commitments.
The best strategic commitments are made on sound reasoning. However, conditions change, and the difficulty is recognising when the original logic no longer holds true. Strategic Validity Management gives boards and executives this governance superpower – the ability to detect an erosion of commitment logic – while there is still time to act.
Every major commitment reaches a point where the honest question is: does the original logic still hold?
The tendency to provide further capital to existing commitments is known as escalation of commitment – the natural pull to keep backing a course of action because so much has already gone into it. It is one of the toughest governance disciplines, and it has little to do with the calibre of the people involved. The original case was sound and well argued. What is usually missing is a record of the reasoning in a form that can be tested later – so there is no clear, agreed point at which a changing world becomes a prompt to look again.
That is the gap SVM was built to close: not to second-guess the decision, but to make decision reasoning explicit and revisable.
SVM gives every major commitment a Strategic Validity Record – the assumptions it rests on, the evidence that would confirm or challenge each one, and the triggers that bring it back for review. When an assumption no longer holds, the record shows it.
The CARMR framework
Five structured fields that capture the reasoning behind a commitment and keep it easy to revisit as conditions change.
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C
Commitment
A precise statement of the decision scope and the strategic frame it is based on.
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A
Assumptions
The critical premises that the commitment depends on and the evidence that would disconfirm them.
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R
Reasoning
IF – THEN – BECAUSE logic linking assumptions to outcomes, so you can see which changes matter most.
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M
Meaning
Clear, stable definitions of the critical terms, so a shared word keeps a shared meaning over time.
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R
Review
Pre-agreed triggers – dates and events – that bring the decision back to the table at the right moment.
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A clear signal, at the moment it is useful.
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Invalidation Flag
Surfaced automatically
When a critical assumption no longer holds, the record raises a flag and moves to Under Review – so the board sees it as soon as it happens, not months later.
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Commitment Integrity Score
The whole portfolio at a glance
A single 0 – 100 read on how sound and how well-maintained the reasoning behind each commitment is, so attention goes where it is needed most.
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Dissenting Views
Every perspective kept
Minority views are preserved and attributed in full, so a well-judged reservation keeps its value and can be revisited if the picture changes.
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Where it sits
From good judgement to governed judgement.The most experienced leaders already reason this way – defining the decision, testing the assumptions, watching for what would change their mind. SVM does not replace that judgement. It gives it a shared, durable form: making the reasoning behind a commitment explicit, open to challenge, and simple to revisit later. Strategic Validity Management sits alongside your existing governance, risk and compliance systems. SVM adds the layer above them – the reasoning behind your largest strategic commitments, and a structured, auditable answer to the question every board eventually returns to: how do we know this is still a good decision? Curious about the thinking behind SVM? Read more on our Substack → |
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