Decision brief: Year-1 targets on a flat team

A simulated leadership room (fictional role archetypes from Tony's Virtual Leadership Team method). Tony Gilharry is Driver and made the final decision. Lens for every seat: will this save time, will this save money, is it the simple thing that works, are we moving with intent, should we think again, does it adapt to the market?

Decision

What Cloud Cruz's partner program commits to by Mar 31, 2028, on a flat partner team.

Context and evidence

Cloud Cruz launches its program Apr 1, 2027 after a 90-day beta (decision 15). North star: customers live through partners (decision 57). The implementation-package budget is $100,000 for the beta, about 57 packages (decision 61).

DACI

Driver: Tony Gilharry
Approver: Tony Gilharry
Contributors: VP Global Partnerships, GTM Operations, GTM Analytics, Finance, Enablement, Partner Field, Partner Marketing, Forward-Deployed AI
Informed: the partner team

Options

Option	Benefits	Costs / risks
Conservative, about 500 signed	Easy to defend	Quieter story, smaller dataset
Base, about 1,000 signed	Matches a real, proven pace	Needs a large lead funnel
Stretch, about 1,500 signed	Biggest numbers	Hard to justify for a new program

Specialist positions (round 1)

VP Global Partnerships: signed partners is a vanity metric; commit to outcomes.
GTM Analytics: measure activation by monthly cohort, or a large signed count distorts the rate.
Finance: most customers live must arrive without subsidy; the package budget funds enterprise go-lives only; no double counting.
GTM Operations: human attention caps at 60 to 80 managed partners; the signed count should follow capacity.
Enablement: 250 activated partners means about 1,000 accredited people; feasible with free self-paced L1 plus weekly cohorts.
Partner Marketing: 1,000 signed needs 3,000 to 4,000 partner leads.
Partner Field: AEs want live customers and co-sold pipeline, not partner counts.

Think again (round 2): will this scale on flat headcount?

Finding: the Foundation data grew the team from 14 to 15; a flat team of 9 replaces it.
GTM Operations: fix the process, then automate it; people act only on cold flags and managed partners.
Forward-Deployed AI: builds 3 and 4 become the operating model: Support Hub answers, agentic PDR drafts and scores, triage clears clean registrations; a person approves every send.
GTM Analytics: measure scale: customers live per team member; share of partner work with no human touch.
Finance: costs grow only with performance, so cost per customer live falls; time saved is not cash saved.
Enablement: one partner solutions architect reviewing every L2 and L3 is the bottleneck; use the rubric plus sampling and a weekly cap.
Partner Field: keep co-sell gated to Select and above to protect AE time.
Partner Marketing: the directory, self-match and co-marketing templates recruit; automated lead scoring is required.

Conflicts and tradeoffs

Ambition versus budget; signed volume versus activation quality; a small team's attention versus a large long tail, resolved by automation with human approval (decision 46).

Driver recommendation and decision

Approved by Tony Gilharry, 2026-09-25 (decisions 65 and 66):

Year-1 target	Number
North star: customers live through partners	400
Partners activated	250
Activated within 90 days (cohort)	40%
Partner team, flat all year	9
Customers live per team member	44+
Partner questions answered by the Support Hub without a ticket	60%
Long-tail onboarding with no human touch	70%
Managed partners	60 to 80
Partners signed (input, not a headline)	about 1,000

Conditions: the Year-1 data holds headcount at 9; L2 and L3 reviews use rubric plus sampling.
Review dates: Jan 1 and Jul 1 program reviews.

Actions and next gate

Action	Owner	Due	Evidence
Add targets to `01-scenario.md`	Claude	Sep 25	Committed
Regenerate data to land near targets, headcount 9	Claude builds; Tony runs and approves	Oct 2	`db:verify` passes
Measurement Layer reports these targets	Build 2	With Build 2	The measurement page shows them