Domain Plug-Ins
For Both Executive and Technical ReadersThe engine does not change from one industry to the next. The subject matter does. These pages are that subject matter, worked out in advance.
01 What a Plug-In Is
The method behind this practice does not change from one industry to the next. What changes is the subject matter: which factors matter, what the experts know, and which decisions are on the table.
A domain plug-in is that subject matter, worked out in advance. It is the vocabulary of an industry, the way its pieces connect, and the questions its leaders ask, already mapped, so an engagement does not start from a blank page.
Think of it as the difference between buying a tool and buying a tool that already knows your trade.
02 What Stays the Same
Underneath every plug-in is the same engine, and it answers the same three kinds of question. The pages in this column differ only in what those questions are about.
Every page below applies these three to one industry. If the framework itself is new to you, start with Pearl’s Ladder before reading any of them.
03 The Domains
Grouped by the kind of problem rather than by industry label, because the shape of the problem is what determines whether this approach fits.
Money and Direction
Strategy, pressure-test a direction before you commit resources to it.
Finance, retention, credit, and acquisition calls where the obvious reading of the numbers misleads.
Marketing Mix, correct mis-stated channel returns so budget follows what actually drives sales.
Regulated Risk
Insurance, pricing, reserving, and exposure you can defend to a regulator.
Utilities, grid risk and shut-off decisions under wildfire conditions.
Compliance, privacy and cyber-security exposure, stated in a form an auditor accepts.
Litigation, the legal standard is whether the harm would have occurred anyway. Standard statistics does not answer that. This does.
Operations
Supply Chain, which resilience investments actually protect you when a supplier fails.
Manufacturing, where the dashboard misses how the pieces connect and points you at the wrong fix.
Business Process Integration, your process diagrams already say who does what and when. They go quiet at the decision points. This fills them in.
Specialist
Healthcare, which treatment helps which patient, answered per patient rather than on the average.
InfoSec, which security products are worth buying, given that their coverage overlaps.
Security Operations, modelling an attack as a chain of steps rather than a pile of alerts.
04 Two Full Walkthroughs
Two of these are worked end to end rather than summarized. If you want to see what the output looks like before you consider an engagement, read one of these instead of a domain page.
Insurance Attribution takes a single claim and runs it up all three rungs, ending in an answer that holds up under challenge.
Security Walkthrough builds a complete causal security model against two recognized industry standards.
05 Where to Start
Read your own industry first, it will tell you whether the shape of the problem matches yours. Then read one that is not your industry. That second read is the useful one, because it shows you the method rather than the subject matter, and the method is what you are actually evaluating.
If none of these is your industry, the gap is in the plug-in, not in the approach. The engine is the same either way.
The method does not change from one industry to the next. What changes is who you have to convince, and what they already know.