SAMPLE · ACME ENGINEERING
six engineers, slightly abridgedA six-person team,
mapped end to end.
This is what the report actually looks like. A team Compass below, a personal manual underneath, one AI advisor exchange at the bottom. Names changed, prose unedited. The kind of document the CTO of Acme keeps pinned in their notes app.
- TEAM SIZE
- 6 engineers
- COMPLETION
- 6 of 6 · 100%
- TIME PER PERSON
- ~22 minutes
- REPORT GENERATED
- Instant on the last submit
01 / THE TEAM COMPASS
The team Compass.
The long-form report. Read once, refer back to it forever.
Acme's engineering team leans hard on exploration, async work, and direct feedback. Exceptional at generating options and shipping in long heads-down blocks. Less practiced at converging on a single plan and bringing in dependent stakeholders mid-flight.
Decision-making is consensus-light, evidence-heavy. Expect tension when scoping anything ambiguous, the team has two distinct execution rhythms (Sarah's tight loops, Tom's long divergent ones) and currently no-one whose job is to land between them. The composition is a strength for exploratory work and a constraint when an external deadline arrives.
Five of six lean above the mid-line on exploration. Sarah is the team's execution anchor. Tom is its strongest divergent thinker.
PAIRING TO WATCH
Sarah closes loops tightly while Tom keeps generating new options. Expect tension when scoping anything new, useful, but worth acknowledging upfront. Pair them on early-stage decisions, separate them once the path is chosen.
PAIRING TO WATCH
Both lean strongly toward direct feedback delivery and both run on async cycles. They will hash out architectural disagreements at length in the PR thread. Set a 24-hour escalation rule: if the thread is still open after a day, pull in Priya to break the tie.
STRENGTH TO LEVERAGE
Priya sits closest to the centre of every axis. The team's best mediator and the natural pick to run cross-functional syncs. Don't let her get pulled into pure execution work; her highest value is at the seams.
WHAT SHAPE YOUR NEXT HIRE SHOULD BE
A structured executor who can co-pilot a roadmap.
Your team has two well-defined execution rhythms (tight, Sarah) and (long, Tom) and currently no-one whose job is to converge them. Hire someone who closes loops sharply, works in shorter sync blocks, and is comfortable owning the “land the plane” half of a project they didn't scope.
Specifically: above-mid Conscientiousness, mid-high Extraversion, mid Openness. Comfortable in sync rituals. Allergic to ambiguity past the planning stage. The job spec should emphasise delivery-pace ownership over architectural authorship.
HIRING BRIEF, NOT A CANDIDATE SCREEN. Compass shapes the role you post, not the people you interview.
02 / A PERSONAL MANUAL
A one-page user manual.
One per person. The shortest version of how to work with them.
Closes loops. Names the trade-off. Moves on.
Sarah, you operate as a tight-loop execution anchor. You read the room fast, name the actual decision being made, and force the trade-off into the open before the conversation wanders. Teams ship faster around you because you reject ambiguity at the planning stage rather than at the deadline.
- 01
Bring her the trade-off, not the options. She wants the question, not the menu.
- 02
Give her a tight written brief. Long Slack threads lose her; a one-pager keeps her.
- 03
Tell her when something is provisional. She will treat a half-formed idea as a commitment otherwise.
- 04
She delivers feedback as a verdict, not a suggestion. That is the feature; calibrate your expectation, not her style.
- 05
Under pressure she narrows scope. Make space for that, it's the right reflex.
03 / THE AI ADVISOR
An AI that knows your team.
A chat that has read every manual. Ask it anything, get a grounded answer.
How do I tell Tom his last code review was harsh without him going on the defensive?
Tom reads “the code review was harsh” as a process question, not a feelings question, start there. His manual has him scoring strongly on direct feedback delivery and on long divergent thinking. He is not going to be moved by softening the language; he's going to be moved by the specific tactical point.
Three things to try:
- Open with the specific comment, not the pattern. “The thread on line 84, let's talk about that one” lands better than “your reviews have been harsh lately.” The specific comment is debuggable; the pattern feels like a verdict.
- Name the reviewer's state of mind, not Tom's. James wrote that PR after two long days; he was looking for a green light, not a Socratic dialogue. Tom will hear that and adjust; he respects context he didn't have.
- Skip the “how does that land for you” close. From Tom's manual: “Avoid open-ended emotional check-ins.” He'll experience it as the conversation reopening when he thought it was closed.
GROUNDED IN · Tom Reeves manual, James Lin manual, conflict-mode pairing matrix
NEXT
Run Compass for your own team.
One-shot, £299 for up to 15 seats. Re-run when the team changes. No subscription, no calls required.