CALIBRA keeps score. It is the evaluation method used in Langtry Advisory engagements, and it works the way a weather forecast works. It commits to one call, it says how confident it is, and it gets marked twelve months later.
The reading ends in a single verb. Expand. Hold. Exit. Not a menu of scenarios for you to choose between, which is how most strategy work quietly hands the decision back.
Like a 70 per cent chance of rain. Every instruction carries a stated confidence, so you can tell a strong call from a shaky one. Both are useful. Confusing them is not.
Twelve months on, someone checks whether it rained. The reading is compared against what actually happened and the result is recorded. Right or wrong, it goes down.
A critic tells you what they think. A punter puts money on it and finds out.
Strategy has always been criticism. This makes it a bet you can settle. Almost no framework commits in advance to being marked: advice is given, the engagement ends, and nobody goes back. The commitment to return is part of this method, not a courtesy.
The contribution is not the framework. Frameworks are abundant, and almost none of them has ever been wrong about anything, because nobody wrote down what they predicted before the event. The contribution is the commitment made in advance: a recorded, scored prediction on a live commercial decision, published in advance and marked afterwards. Strategy has had theory since Ansoff and evidence since Ehrenberg. What the field has never much wanted is falsifiability.
And commercially: the client eventually finds out whether the advice was any good, which is close to a novelty.
The method has its own vocabulary, as most disciplines do. Here is the whole of it in ordinary language. Nothing else needs translating.
5As™ tells you what to do. CALIBRA tells you whether you are right.
The 5As is the five-stage method for cutting complexity and setting direction: Assess, Assimilate, Architect, Activate, Amplify. CALIBRA is the instrument that scores a specific decision and commits to being marked. They run in sequence, not in competition. CALIBRA sits inside Assess, the first A.
The method is the same in every volume. What changes is the decision it is pointed at, and the set of instructions available. Each volume has its own colour, which is how the set is navigated in print and on screen.
The four-lens architecture, the volume verb sets and the audit discipline that govern every other volume.
How the whole system works.
Volume IBuy-side and sell-side target evaluation, resolving to Proceed, Hold, Walk or Kill.
Should we buy this, and at what price.
Volume IIValuation of brand, customer relationships, data and goodwill, with IFRS 3, IAS 36 and insurance cross-walks.
What the things you cannot touch are worth.
Volume IIIMedia allocation across seven channel classes, including walled-garden attribution.
Where the advertising money should go.
Volume IVSeven-P mix evaluation and marketing management effectiveness.
Which levers actually move the business.
Volume VPortfolio architecture across master, sub-brand, endorsed and standalone classes.
How many brands, and how they relate.
Volume VIChannel architecture and rationalisation across direct, indirect and marketplace routes.
Which routes to market to back, and which to leave.
Volume VIIList price, realised price, mix and packaging, with FCA and APRA pricing conduct cross-walks.
What to charge, and what happens when you change it.
Volume VIIIService and retention-stage investment, including contact-centre to AI deflection.
Which service investments pay, and which do not.
Volume IXMateriality and impact assessment aligned to TCFD, TNFD, ISSB, CSRD and CBAM.
Which commitments are material, and which are decoration.
Volume XAI deployment and agent governance, with SR 11-7, SS1/23 and CPG 235 cross-walks.
Where AI belongs in the business, and who governs it.
Volume PEPortfolio-level reading across held assets, for operating partners and LPAC chairs.
Reading a whole portfolio rather than one company.
The method sits behind Langtry Advisory engagements. When a client is deciding whether to buy a business, where to put the advertising budget, or which routes to market to leave, the reading is done with CALIBRA and the client sees the output rather than the machinery.
The volumes are made available to clients where the work calls for it, and to a small number of practitioners under licence. The published series can also be read on subscription, which is set out under Tiers. The method itself is not sold from this site.