Three Pillars Marketing Operations Finance

Task Library

Map the business onto its Three Pillars – Marketing, Operations, Finance – assign one health metric to each, and rebalance effort toward the weakest pillar.

Category: Strategy & Measurement

Use this when you need a whole-business diagnosis – growth has stalled, work feels busy but unprofitable, or you must decide where the next hour or dollar goes.

Inputs

  • A list of all recurring activities, roles, and tools in the business
  • Basic numbers: pipeline/leads, delivery throughput and quality, revenue/margin/cash
  • The owner's 90-day goals, so pillar priorities tie to something concrete

Steps

  1. Define the triangle: every business runs on Marketing/Sales (demand: attention, leads, deals), Operations (delivery: fulfilling what was sold), and Finance (fuel: pricing, margin, cash flow). A business is only as strong as its weakest pillar.
  2. Map every recurring activity, role, and tool to exactly one pillar. Anything that maps to none is a Delete candidate (Personal Efficiency triangle).
  3. Assign one primary health metric per pillar – e.g., Marketing: qualified leads or pipeline value; Operations: on-time delivery or capacity utilization; Finance: gross margin or cash runway.
  4. Score each pillar against its 90-day goal and identify the constraint – the weakest pillar that caps the other two (great marketing can't save broken delivery; great delivery can't save negative margin).
  5. Rebalance: move effort, budget, and the next hires/delegations toward the constraint pillar; write the decision down with a review date.
  6. Measure it: review all three pillar metrics in the weekly MAA report so no pillar drifts unwatched between strategic reviews.

Definition of done (QA checklist)

  • Every recurring activity and role mapped to exactly one pillar
  • One primary metric per pillar, with current value and target
  • The constraint pillar named, with a written rebalancing action and review date
  • All three pillar metrics appearing in the weekly MAA report
  • Linked back to the definitive article and relevant siblings
  • Complies with Blog Posting Guidelines (if it publishes content)

Example(s)

  • Example needed – run the Meta-Article Prompt after first real run. (The hub at /nine-triangles links live examples; pull the closest match into this slot.)

File in the zip: skills/strategy-measurement/three-pillars-marketing-operations-finance.md. Download the Task Library zip.

Index: Task Library. Article guidelines.

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