The 3x3 for a public company

Public companies tell you what's wrong with them. They have to. The filings, the earnings calls and the investor presentations are the richest research source in services sales, and plenty of reps never open them.

The 3x3 gives you a way to read them fast. Three sources, up to three facts each. Then a hypothesis.

Public record

This is where public companies outshine everyone else. Start with the latest 10-K. Skip to the risk factors and the management discussion and analysis. Those sections name the pressures in the company's own words. Legacy systems. Cost programs. Integration of an acquisition. Margin targets. Cybersecurity concerns. Talent shortages.

Then the latest 10-Q, for what changed since the annual report. Then the most recent earnings release, filed as an 8-K, and the call commentary if you can find it. Leaders say things on calls they'd never put in an email.

Then the job posts. They name platforms and problems the filings only gesture at. A 10-K talks about modernizing technology. A run of job posts for mainframe engineers with cloud experience says what that means.

Pick up to three facts. The ones that point at the problem you solve.

Social context

Now the people. Who's new in the buying seat? A new CFO, CIO or segment president at a public company has a mandate and an investor audience. Their first 90 days are the strongest window you'll get.

Read what they post. Executives at public companies are careful, but they still signal priorities. A CIO posting about simplifying the application estate is telling you what the next budget cycle funds.

Check whether any past champions of yours have landed there. That's the warmest start possible.

Up to three facts.

Market

Last, the world around them. Competitors who just announced restructurings or platform moves. Analysts pressing the company on margins. Industry voices their leaders follow.

Public companies are compared every quarter. If a peer cut costs and got rewarded, your buyer's board noticed. That comparison is often the real source of pressure.

Up to three facts. Often fewer here, and that's fine.

Turning nine facts into one guess

You won't use all nine. Look for the facts that point at the same problem from different angles. That's the hypothesis.

Say a mid-size specialty retailer's 10-K lists aging point of sale and inventory systems as a risk. The latest earnings release mentions a cost program. A new CIO started seven weeks ago. Job posts list several roles for retail systems integration. A close competitor recently announced a store systems overhaul.

Five facts, one story.

You've stepped into the CIO seat right as the 10-K flags the store systems as a risk and the company commits to a cost program. My guess is you're being asked to modernize and cut spend in the same breath, and the integration work is bigger than the current team can carry. Is that accurate, or is the harder problem somewhere else?

The research hook is public. The personal trigger is the new seat. The misery hypothesis comes from the facts lining up. The binary exit makes it easy to correct.

Keep it fast

A 3x3 on a public company should take minutes, not hours. You're not writing an analyst report. You're looking for enough to make a specific guess.

Don't quote the filing back at them. They know what's in it. Name what it says in plain words and connect it to their seat.

And don't stop at one person. The same nine facts make a different hypothesis for the CFO, the champion and the technical lead. The CFO hears about the cost program and the payback. The champion hears about the integration load. The technical lead hears about the systems themselves. Write three.

The method page covers the full structure, and the binary exit question goes deeper on the last line.