# The Advantage Compass — Facilitator Guide > Folder: `advantage-compass` · Category: self-assessment · solo · 25 min · paper or online · assessment-type > License: CC BY 4.0 A personal strategy tool, not a personality test. The Advantage Compass crosses two axes every career decision already depends on — where you are strong, and what the future needs — and maps your work into four quadrants. One of them is your golden track: the work you should double down on. Two of them are traps with familiar names: firefighting, and burnout. --- ## Why another self-assessment Most self-assessment stops at inventory: here are your strengths, here are your weaknesses, good luck. An inventory cannot answer the question that actually matters — *given my strengths, where should I spend the next year?* The Compass borrows from corporate strategy, where this question was solved decades ago. SWOT analysis tells a company not just what it has, but where to commit resources. The Compass imports that move and rebuilds it for a person, with one deliberate upgrade: it adds **time** as an axis. Companies fight over market share; people fight over their calendar. The interesting conflicts — vision against today's fires, strength against the drag of weakness — only become visible when time is in the model. The result is one page: four quadrants, each naming what your work there is worth and what it costs. --- ## Three ways to run this folder - **Solo, with an agent (25 min).** Hand the folder to your AI agent via `SKILL.md`, or paste the items from `advantage-compass-assessment.json` into a FormLM form — same 6 items, automatic scoring, every re-run comparable. - **Teaching the model (25 min + Q&A).** The facilitator notes (`advantage-compass-facilitator-notes.pdf`) carry the full run of show: the trap opening, the axes as questions, the live demo with your own audit, and the answers to the questions you will get — and `advantage-compass-slide-deck.html` puts the 16 slides on any screen: a presenter drawer with notes and a run-of-show clock, a live audit device the room can watch fill. The PDF edition is for the lectern or printing. - **Workshop, offline (25 min per run).** Print one A4 answer sheet (`advantage-compass-paper-form.pdf`) per participant plus the poker deck (`advantage-compass-prop-cards.pdf`). Pens, not devices; calendars, not memories. New to the folder? `advantage-compass-start-here.md` maps every file to its use. --- ## The two axes **Horizontal — Strength × Weakness.** What you do with low effort and high output, versus what drains you for average results. Self-ratings work here because you are the only witness to your effort: the question is not *am I good at this* but *what does this cost me*. **Vertical — Vision × Pain.** Vision is the work you want to be doing in three years — the pull. Pain is today's problems, deadlines, and other people's emergencies — the push. The gap between them is where careers are decided. The quadrants: | Quadrant | Axes | Plain name | What it is worth | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Vision × Strength | The golden track | Compounds — every hour makes the next hour more valuable | | 2 | Vision × Weakness | The learning zone | Worth exactly one investment: enough to unblock the golden track | | 3 | Pain × Strength | The firefighting track | Efficient, praised, and worth less every month | | 4 | Pain × Weakness | The burnout trap | Costs energy, produces mediocrity, proves nothing | --- ## How to run it Four steps, about 25 minutes, paper or online. **Step 1 — Collect evidence, not opinions (10 min).** List the last two weeks of work, hour by hour if you can. For each block, mark two things: how good you are at it (strong / weak) and who wanted it (your vision / today's pain). Opinions about yourself arrive pre-flattered; a calendar does not lie. **Step 2 — Place the evidence (5 min).** Sort every block into a quadrant. Most people discover their actual calendar is 15% golden track, 60% firefighting, and the rest damage. That number is the assessment. **Step 3 — Read the map (5 min).** Three questions, in order: Which single block in Q1 is worth protecting first? Which Q3 obligation could be delegated or automated within a month? Which Q4 commitment should be ended, not improved? **Step 4 — Commit to one move (5 min).** One concrete change, dated, with a check-back date in two weeks. Not a life plan — one move. The Compass is re-run monthly; strategies are revised, not regretted. --- ## The known distortions 1. **The competence mirage.** You are good at Q3 work, so you keep doing it — being needed feels like being valued. The test is not *am I good at this* but *does this make next year easier or harder*. Firefighting is rewarded in the present and punished by the future. 2. **The humility discount.** Q1 strengths get under-marked because they feel effortless — *anyone could do this*. They could not. If something feels easy to you and valuable to others, it is a strength; the effortlessness is the signal, not the counterargument. 3. **The weakness project.** Q4 work gets defended as *growth*. Some is. The test: does this weakness block the golden track, or just bruise the ego? Only the blocking kind deserves training, and only up to "good enough" — minimum viable competence, not mastery. 4. **The vision confusion.** Pain is loud and vision is quiet; under deadline pressure, everything looks like Q3. If everything lands in one quadrant, the axes are being read wrong — go back to Step 1 and use the calendar, not the memory. --- ## Facilitator notes for one-to-one use The Compass is self-scored, but it runs powerfully as a 25-minute coaching conversation: the coachee fills Steps 1–2 alone, then reads the map out loud while you ask only the three Step-3 questions. Do not counsel; ask. The most useful facilitator move is the silence after *does this make next year easier or harder* — people answer it honestly when nobody rescues them from the pause. For teams: run it individually first, then aggregate the quadrants on a shared wall. A team whose calendar is 80% Q3 does not have a productivity problem; it has a strategy problem, and now it can see which one. --- ## Variations - **The quarterly audit:** same tool, longer memory — three months of calendar instead of two weeks. Slower to run, sharper at exposing the firefighting ratchet. - **The career crossroads version:** at a job decision, score the *offer* against the quadrants, not your calendar. A role that is 70% Q4 is a well-paid burnout; the salary is buying your Q1 hours. - **The team allocation version:** managers map their reports' quadrants instead of their own. The honest question shifts from *who works hardest* to *who is working on the future*. --- ## Files in this folder - `advantage-compass-start-here.md` — the one-page map: pick your lane, file list, print lists - `advantage-compass-slide-deck.html` — the deck as a stage tool: presenter drawer (S), run-of-show timer, live audit device, silence timer (T); white-label = three replacements - `advantage-compass-slide-deck.pdf` — the same 16 slides as a print/lectern PDF (the deck's print fallback) - `advantage-compass-facilitator-notes.pdf` — facilitator notes for teaching the model: the 25-minute run of show - `advantage-compass-workbook.pdf` — the participant workbook: the model in plain words, guided working pages, a work-block log, and a re-run tracker - `advantage-compass-paper-form.pdf` — print-and-fill A4 answer sheet: the 6 items + two-week audit, one per participant - `advantage-compass-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed + cut guides): compass card, four quadrant cards, audit card, backs and blanks - `advantage-compass-activity-poster.pdf` — A3 wall poster of the model: dial, healthy calendar, exit moves, cited theory trail - `advantage-compass-guide.md` — this guide - `advantage-compass-debrief.md` — how to read the map and the four exit moves - `advantage-compass-assessment.json` — the 6 placement items + time-audit, plain JSON - `advantage-compass-license.md` — what you may do with this kit, in plain language — CC BY 4.0 plus two attribution-free commercial tiers - `SKILL.md` — machine-readable manifest for AI agents - `advantage-compass-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief sheet, bound as one A4 PDF - `*-Letter.pdf` — US Letter paper size for all four print documents (run sheet, workbook, answer sheet, facilitator notes); same content, bookmarks and linked TOC in every edition ## Agent version Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the debrief and this guide with two curl commands (see `SKILL.md`), or run the whole self-assessment as a live form with one `formlm-cli smart generate` step. The paper version needs no screen: cards, a pen, and two honest weeks.