The Three-Star model shows the state of each domain. Movement 2 (Select) of T04, the Focus Selection Protocol, says what to do with that information. It is a four-question process, designed to take fifteen minutes, producing one actionable output: the domain you will make the focus of your leadership work for the next quarter, along with three concrete tasks, one owner, and one observable signal that will tell you whether the work landed.
The four questions run in order.
Which domain is most visibly under-serving your team right now? This is the output of Movement 1 (Assess) of T04 with the triangulation applied. If one domain is unambiguously one-star in both your assessment and your partner’s, the answer is clear. If two or three tie, the tiebreaker is whichever drag is producing the most immediate cost, Function drag breaking delivery, Organisation drag producing attrition, Cooperation drag losing the next roadmap argument. The question is less which domain you are weakest in than which under-serving is costing the team the most right now.
What specific pattern does the under-serving produce? Pin down the symptom, not the domain. “Our Function is weak” is a label. “Three of our four most recent releases slipped because handoff to engineering raised unresolved interaction questions that should have been closed in design review” is a symptom. The patterns of a domain are observable in the team’s week-to-week work, and spelling them out precisely makes the next question answerable.
What one move in the next 90 days would most shift the pattern? A single move, with two or three ruled out. The three tasks that appear on the Quarterly Leadership Cycle are the sub-steps of that one move, rather than parallel moves among them. The constraint prevents the common pitfall of a focus quarter where the leader tries to fix everything about the under-serving domain and moves none of it.
What signal will tell you whether the move landed? Observable, falsifiable, visible by the end of the quarter. “The handoff to engineering stops raising unresolved interaction questions in at least three consecutive releases” is a signal. “The team feels better about Function” is not. The signal lets the end-of-quarter review be candid rather than diplomatic. It turns “we worked on it” into “it moved” or “it didn’t.”