How Pronoa works.
One decision, five stages, eighteen steps. What you hold at the end is the call and the warrant for the call.
Most tools stop at a confident answer. Pronoa governs how the answer was reached: the decision is understood before analysis begins, assumptions are surfaced and calibrated, fragility is mapped before commitment, and the recommendation is preserved with its dissent.
Prefer the long form? Read what decision governance means
- 01
Intake
The decision stated in your words: what, why now, what success means.
- 02
Screening
A structured go/no-go gate before a full run. A pass opens intake; a no-go is logged with reasons. Arrives shortly after launch.
- 03
Deep Analysis
The 18-step engine: assumptions, sensitivity, fragility, second-order effects, dissent. Shown below.
- 04
Comparison
Options run against the same assumptions and the same dissent, side by side, logged.
- 05
Decision Memory
Written once, never edited. The reasoning outlives the meeting, and the people in it.
Inside the eighteen steps.
Deep Analysis runs in five phases. Each step’s output feeds the next, and every number in the brief traces to its source.
DefineBefore any analysis
The decision is framed in your words: what is being decided, why now, what success means, who holds the authority, and whether it can be undone.
AnalyzeStep 5: assumptions
The assumptions the call rests on are surfaced, including the ones nobody stated, and each is rated against evidence with an explicit confidence level that you can adjust, confirm, or reject. Constraints and stakeholders are mapped alongside.
EvaluateThe options
Materially different courses of action, including one that argues against the premise, are developed and scored on weighted criteria.
Stress testStep 11: fragility
The leading options are pushed until they show where they break: failure modes, hidden dependencies, second-order effects, matched historical precedents, and how the answer moves if the key assumptions shift.
DecideThe brief and the record
A recommendation with its dissent and the conditions that would invalidate it, the brief for the room, early-warning triggers for execution, and a permanent entry in the decision log.
Rotate through one decision.
Five screens from the same decision, intake to brief.
Recommendation
Reduced leverage with staged integration (COA 2): acquire at $215M with senior debt capped at 45% of enterprise value, the lowest-fragility structure in the set; it survives a 15% EBITDA contraction without covenant breach.
Highest-risk assumption: if this breaks, revisit
Existing management can run the core business, execute the automation roadmap, and integrate add-ons simultaneously, without a leadership upgrade.
Primary dissenting view
COA 4 (conditional approval with a thesis gate) separates board approval from the binding capital commitment, capping downside at diligence cost rather than $118M of committed capital.
An actual Pronoa brief: illustrative decision, real structure.
Rotate the stages: one decision, intake to brief.
One analysis, briefed for the room.
The same governed analysis comes out at the depth each audience needs.
Board
A condensed pre-read: the call, the confidence behind it, the highest-risk assumption, the stop triggers, and the dissent.
Investment committee
The full case for the committee: options scored side by side, the assumption ledger, and the fragility map.
War Room
The full working detail for the team in the room, including your organization’s context.
Built on established disciplines
The frameworks are public. The orchestration is not.
- Porter’s Five Forces
- Reference class forecasting
- Pre-mortem analysis
- Monte Carlo logic
- Sensitivity analysis
- Scenario planning
- Stakeholder mapping
- Weighted scoring matrix
- and twenty-plus others
An 18-step methodology decides which frameworks each decision needs, in what order, and how each one’s output feeds the next. The result lands on one page with its provenance intact.
Modes, now and next.
The decision does not end at the brief Releases mid-2027
Post-thesis tracking monitors the assumptions and invalidation conditions after the call. Outcomes reconcile back into the record; a decision reality is breaking gets flagged for reopening.
Decisions side by side Releases spring 2027
Portfolio Comparison runs options and decisions side by side on the same assumptions and the same dissent, so competing calls are weighed on one basis instead of two memos.
The record compounds
The model forgets; your decision intelligence doesn’t. Every decision, assumption, commitment, and dissent accumulates into an asset the firm owns: the memory a new executive reads in week one, and the precedent the next decision starts from.
- Full 18-step
- Screening shortly after launch
- Reference Heat Map shortly after launch
- Focused Analysis early 2027
- Portfolio Comparison spring 2027
- Comparative Analysis 2027
- Post-thesis tracking mid-2027
The warrant is the product. No surface presents machine judgment as yours, and no stated input is ever re-authored.
Start with the call in front of you.
Your first decision is free: one real decision, all eighteen steps, a board-ready brief. The record is yours from the first run.
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