tiered-consultancy-reviewlisted

# Tiered consultancy review Most review setups are flat: one reviewer, one pass, done. That catches surface errors but misses the things a real firm catches before a partner-level deliverable goes out the door: weak framing, an unearned claim, a tone mismatch for the audience, a competitor argument nobody stress-tested. The fix is to run review as an actual **escalation ladder**, the way a consultancy staffs a real engagement: juniors first, then managers, then specialists, then partners, and only then does it reach the person who actually owns the decision. ## The ladder Each tier has a distinct job. Don't collapse them into one giant "review this" pass, the value is in the separation. 1. **Analysts (parallel, blind to each other).** Two or three independent first passes, each reading the draft cold through a different frame (e.g., one for the core argument, one for factual/technical grounding, one for how a skeptical outsider would read it). Blind means they don't see each other's notes yet: that's what prevents one loud opinion from anchoring the rest. 2. **Managers (synthesis).** Merge the analyst passes into one coherent draft. Resolve overlaps, keep the sharpest version of each point, and drop redundant feedback. This is where "several good ideas" becomes "one good draft." 3. **Specialists (targeted passes).** One or two reviewers with a narrow, specific mandate, e.g., "is every factual claim actually true and not overstated," or "does this read naturally for the in