Organization Context Setup Guide
Living Company AI facilitator's analysis is only as good as the data it has. This guide shows you how to populate each organization context tab, what Living Company AI does with the data, and what constitutes the minimum viable context for a productive first session.
The Minimum Viable Context
You do not need to complete every tab before your first planning session. Here is what you need at minimum:
| Must Have | Nice to Have | Can Add Later |
|---|---|---|
| 3-5 competitors with strengths and weaknesses | 2-3 years of financial statements | Detailed business processes |
| 3-5 key customer segments with needs and pain points | Market context (TAM/SAM/SOM) | Partnership details |
| Key product lines with revenue contribution | Business process pain points | Culture and capabilities |
| Organization chart (at least senior leadership) | Employee skills and strategic alignment |
Rule of thumb: If you can populate competitors, customers, and products before the first session, Living Company AI will deliver meaningfully sharper analysis in the LEARN phase. Everything else enriches the output but is not blocking.
Tab 1: Profile
The Profile tab captures the organization's identity and strategic context.
Key Fields
- Name — the organization's official name
- Industry — selecting an industry triggers automatic provisioning of relevant external data sources (news feeds, benchmarks, industry reports)
- Description — a paragraph describing what the company does
- Mission Statement — the organization's stated purpose
- Vision Statement — the aspirational future state
- Current Challenges — 2-5 bullet points summarizing the strategic issues that prompted the engagement
- Key Lessons Learned — what the organization has learned from previous strategic efforts
- Primary Go-to-Market — direct sales, channel partners, self-serve, etc.
- Distribution Channels — how products and services reach customers
How Living Company AI Uses This
The profile provides foundational context for every Living Company AI interaction. The industry selection is particularly important because it shapes the Broader Environment and Industry Dynamics analysis in the LEARN phase. Current Challenges tell Living Company AI where to probe hardest.
Tab 2: Organization Chart
Enter the key people in the organization. These do not need to be platform users — they are org chart entries used for assignment, analysis, and role matching.
Key Fields Per Employee
- Name — full name
- Title — their actual job title
- Department — which function they belong to
- Role in organization — executive, manager, individual contributor
- Responsibilities — what they own (used for Living Company AI matching to priorities)
- Skills — their key competencies
- Strategic alignment — champion, supporter, neutral, skeptic, or blocker (useful for the EXECUTE phase when planning resistance strategies)
How Living Company AI Uses This
The org chart powers three features: (1) automatic priority owner assignment — Living Company AI matches priorities to employees by department, title, and skills; (2) SOP workflow chains — when SOPs are generated, Living Company AI assigns each step to the most relevant employee by role; (3) EXECUTE phase resistance mapping — Living Company AI references strategic alignment to help craft change management approaches.
Tip: At minimum, enter the C-suite and department heads. Add their departments and responsibilities. You can fill in skills and strategic alignment after the first LEARN session when you have a better sense of the landscape.
Tab 3: Products and Services
Document the organization's product and service portfolio.
Key Fields Per Product Line
- Name — product or service name
- Description — what it does and who it serves
- Revenue contribution — percentage or dollar amount
- Market share — estimated share of addressable market
- Lifecycle stage — introduction, growth, maturity, or decline
- Strengths and Weaknesses (SWOT) — honest assessment
- Target customer segment — who buys this
How Living Company AI Uses This
Product data feeds into the Own Realities analysis in the LEARN phase. Living Company AI uses lifecycle stage and revenue contribution to identify dependencies and vulnerabilities. During FOCUS, Living Company AI references product data when challenging the competitive focus: "You are investing in a declining product line while your growth product gets 10% of the budget."
Tab 4: Competitors
This is one of the highest-impact tabs. The quality of competitive analysis in the LEARN phase directly depends on what you enter here.
Key Fields Per Competitor
- Name — competitor organization name
- Description — what they do, their positioning
- Threat level — low, medium, high, critical
- Strengths — what they do well (be specific and honest)
- Weaknesses — where they are vulnerable
- Recent moves — acquisitions, product launches, hiring patterns, funding rounds from the last 12 months
- Potential responses — how they might react to your strategic moves
How Living Company AI Uses This
Competitor data is used throughout the cycle. In LEARN, Living Company AI conducts competitive analysis and surfaces patterns across competitors. In FOCUS, it stress-tests the winning proposition against each competitor's strengths. The competitive radar feature monitors external signals and flags competitor moves that could affect the strategy.
Tip: Include at least one indirect competitor or potential disruptor — a company from an adjacent industry that could enter this market. These are the competitors most organizations underestimate.
Tab 5: Key Customers
Document distinct customer segments, not individual accounts (unless the organization has a small number of large accounts).
Key Fields Per Customer Segment
- Name — segment name (e.g., "Enterprise Healthcare" or "Mid-Market SaaS")
- Type — B2B or B2C
- Revenue contribution — how much this segment contributes
- Primary needs — what they care about most
- Pain points — what frustrates them
- Unmet needs — needs that nobody in the market addresses well (strategic gold)
- Buying criteria — how they make purchase decisions (price, speed, trust, brand, compliance)
- Strategic importance — how important this segment is to the organization's future
How Living Company AI Uses This
Customer data drives the Customer analysis in LEARN. Living Company AI surfaces unmet needs as potential strategic opportunities, identifies patterns across segments (e.g., "Three of your five segments mention the same pain point"), and challenges assumptions about customer priorities. During FOCUS, customer data informs which segments to prioritize and which to deprioritize.
Tab 6: Financial Statements
Upload or manually enter financial data. Multi-year data is significantly more valuable than a single year because it reveals trends.
Key Fields
- Statement type — income statement, balance sheet, or cash flow statement
- Fiscal year — the year the statement covers
- File upload — PDF, XLSX, or CSV files (the system auto-parses key metrics)
- Key metrics — revenue, total assets, EBITDA, net income, and other metrics can be entered manually
How Living Company AI Uses This
Financial data grounds the Own Realities analysis. Living Company AI identifies revenue trends, margin pressures, and financial strengths or weaknesses. The system also auto-computes financial ratios (margins, current ratio, debt-to-equity, ROA, year-over-year growth) and includes them in the analysis context.
Tip: If you can get 3 years of income statements, that is the single most valuable financial input. Living Company AI can then identify trajectory and flag concerning trends.
Tab 7: Business Processes
Document the key processes that drive the business.
Key Fields Per Process
- Name — process name (e.g., "Customer Onboarding" or "Quote-to-Cash")
- Category — core (directly creates value) or support (enables core processes)
- Owner — select from the org chart
- Performance indicators — how the process is measured
- Current performance — how well it is performing
- Automation level — manual, partially automated, mostly automated, fully automated
- Pain points — current problems or bottlenecks
- Improvement opportunities — where you see potential
How Living Company AI Uses This
Process data informs the ALIGN phase. Living Company AI identifies processes that need to change to support the strategy, recommends specific improvements, and connects process gaps to strategic priorities. The automation level and pain points feed into SOP generation and automation recommendations.
Tabs 8-10: Partnerships, Market Context, Culture
These tabs add depth but are not critical for the first session.
- Partnerships — strategic alliances, key vendors, supplier relationships with dependency and risk levels
- Market Context — total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), serviceable obtainable market (SOM), market share, growth trends, regulatory environment
- Culture & Capabilities — cultural traits, organizational capabilities, innovation capacity
Data Entry Best Practices
- Start with what you know. Do not let incomplete data delay the engagement. Enter the basics and refine as the planning process surfaces new information.
- Prioritize competitors and customers. These have the greatest impact on LEARN phase quality.
- Be honest, not aspirational. Inflating strengths or hiding weaknesses leads to flawed strategy. Living Company AI works best when the data reflects reality.
- Use the chat to fill gaps. During planning sessions, Living Company AI captures competitor, customer, and product information mentioned in conversation and offers to save it to the org context.
- Update after each session. As the team surfaces new information during planning, add it to the relevant tabs so it enriches future Living Company AI analysis.