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The Armoury

Rhetorical weapons: metaphors, framings, one-liners, analogies. Lighter than frameworks, sharper than notes. The stuff you'd actually deploy in a room.

Why It Exists

Frameworks solve structural problems. The armoury solves communication problems. When you're in front of a board and need to make AI transformation visceral in 15 seconds, you reach for a metaphor, not a framework.

Most people have these scattered across slide decks, old emails, shower thoughts they half-remember. The armoury collects them in one place, stress-tested and tagged by audience.

Entry Format

Every armoury entry follows a consistent structure:

### [Sticky Name]
**Line:** "What you'd actually say in the room."
**Mechanic:** Why it works - the underlying logic that makes the
metaphor land, not just sound clever. 1-2 sentences.
**Lands with:** [Audience tags] | **Status:** Raw / Tested / Proven
**Source:** [Origin, date] | **Domain:** [Topic area]
**Related:** [Links to frameworks or other armoury entries]

Status Levels

Status Meaning
Raw Just captured. Sounds good, untested in a room.
Tested Used once with a real audience. Landed or didn't.
Proven Landed multiple times across different audiences. Reliable.

Status only promotes through live use. Never auto-promote based on how clever it sounds on paper.

Sections

The armoury organises entries by type:

  • Metaphors & Analogies - Vivid comparisons that make abstract concepts physical. "We're building the factory that makes AI-native businesses" (manufacturing framing for a services thesis).
  • Positioning Framings - Reframes that shift how an audience categorises what you're doing. "We're ending the era of Knowledge Leasing and entering the era of Knowledge Capitalisation" (OPEX to asset reframe).
  • Diagnostic Questions - Questions that reframe a conversation without appearing to lecture. "What year does it feel like inside your company?" (forces self-assessment).

What Makes a Good Entry

Passes the room test: Would you actually say this to a CEO, a board, or an investment committee? If it only works on paper, it doesn't belong.

Has a mechanic: The metaphor holds up under scrutiny. "Compound interest for expertise" works because returns genuinely generate their own returns in a learning system. A metaphor without a mechanic is just decoration.

Tagged by audience: A metaphor that lands with a CFO ("intelligence arbitrage") might confuse a board. The audience tag prevents misfires.

Honest about failure modes: Every metaphor breaks somewhere. The best entries note where. A franchise analogy implies low-skill labour - fine for PE audiences, wrong for professional services pride.

Audience Quick Reference

The armoury includes a lookup table mapping audiences to their best weapons:

Audience Preferred Weapons Why
Deal Partners / PE Replication economics, margin mechanics Think in multiples and time-to-value
Operating Partners System learning, compounding advantage Care about sustainable moat
CEOs Strategic reframes, urgency, talent Need to see the "so what" instantly
CFOs Financial language, OPEX/CAPEX reframes Native tongue is numbers, not architecture
Trust-sceptical "Same people + system = different outcomes" Need proof that humans stay in control
Boards Emotional resonance, memorable metaphors Remember stories, not slides

How It Connects

The armoury feeds into several other system components:

  • /capture captures new entries with stress-testing
  • /draft checks the armoury for relevant Proven/Tested entries when writing for a specific audience
  • /prep surfaces armoury entries during stakeholder briefing preparation
  • /challenge tests whether a document's metaphors hold under scrutiny

The armoury is a living document. It grows through capture, gets promoted through use, and occasionally gets retired when a metaphor stops landing.