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Stage 01 of 07 · Take stock
Decide what you want, and what you won’t take
This is the stage almost everybody skips, and the one that decides whether the last stage goes well. Before you take a single call, write down the handful of things that will actually settle this for you. They become your evaluation criteria, and you come back to them at every stage that follows — especially the last one, when a number is on the table and it is easy to forget what you came for.
- Who
- You, on your own
- When
- Before the first call
- Really testing
- Whether you can say no later
- Output
- Seven or more factors you keep returning to
Your Matariki cluster / your guiding North Star
Write seven or more — the ones that pull you toward a move, the ones pushing you off your current platform, and the ones you will not cross — and write them before anyone shows you a package.
Matariki is a cluster, not a single star: navigators read the group, not one point of light. The same is true here. No single factor should decide a partner move, and the firm that is strongest on the one thing you happened to think about last is not necessarily the right firm.
Be specific. "Own a sector P&L, sell to CFOs" is a star. "More responsibility" is not — it can be argued into anything. Write them now, while nobody is offering you anything; they are much harder to write honestly once there is a number on the table.
- Stage 2 Check the seat against your three walk-aways before you take the call.
- Stage 3 Aim the business case at a firm that clears the cluster, not just any firm that is interested.
- Stage 4 Compare firms against the cluster, not against whoever was most enthusiastic last.
- Stage 5 Turn anything still unanswered into a due-diligence question.
- Stage 6 Score the offer against every one of them before you read the number.
First, work out where the work actually is
Before you write your cluster, there is a simpler question: what should you be chasing at all? Four circles. The seat worth running a process for sits where all four overlap — and the near-misses, where only two or three overlap, are where most careers quietly stall.
- Love + strength → energising, unsellable
- Love + experience → the comfortable trap
- Strength + market → golden handcuffs
- Experience + market → safe, and draining
What you love
Where you actually get energy. Not the title — the hours in the week you would keep if you could hand back the rest.
What you are good at
Your real strengths, rated honestly. Do you enjoy the stakeholder management, or would you rather be building the model? Both are respectable answers. Only one of them is yours.
Your experience
Pretty much your CV. Most people cannot articulate what they have actually done — and it is the first thing every interviewer in this process tests.
What the market pays for
What firms are hiring and paying for right now, in the sectors you would sell into. Research it. Do not assume it has stayed where it was three years ago.
The three near-misses
- The comfortable trap — you love it and you have done it for years, but the market has moved on. You are the safest person in a shrinking room.
- Golden handcuffs — you are good at it and it pays, and you have quietly stopped wanting it. This is the one that survives longest, because nothing is obviously wrong.
- Safe but draining — your CV fits and the market wants it, so you will get the offer. You will take it. And you will be having this conversation again in two years.
A seat that clears three circles is not the same as a seat that clears four, and the missing one is usually the one you talked yourself out of caring about.
How to run it
Four blank sheets of paper, one question on each, away from a screen — deliberately slow, so you actually think. Then reduce all four to a single page: this is what I love, this is what I am good at, this is what I have done, this is what the market is buying. Done properly it stops being a mood board and starts naming firms.
You need to zero in on the sweet spot. It is your north star, or it is your Matariki that you are heading towards.
— Ben Appleton, in a Strat-Bridge career workshop
The sweet spot tells you which seats are worth chasing. The cluster below tells you which ones you should accept. Do the diagram first.
Pull — what you want
What a new platform must give you. If a firm can't offer it, it's the wrong firm however good the conversation was.
Common pulls we hear — tap to use one
Push — what’s moving you
Why you'd leave a platform you already know. Every interviewer asks this. If you have no honest answer, you are not ready to run a process.
Common pushes — tap to use one
Walk-away — what you won’t take
The lines you won't cross. Write them now, while nobody is offering you anything, because they are much harder to write later.
Common walk-aways — tap to use one
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