Pentagon and Triangle
Pentagon and Triangle is a two-part check on a strategy: the Pentagon names five elements that must line up - objectives, resources, environment, execution, leadership - and the Triangle checks the three-stage process of analysis, formulation and implementation that produced them.
Five points anchor the Pentagon, the first of the tool's two checks. The Triangle's analysis-formulation-implementation sequence runs through the steps below, not the diagram.
Reach for this when…
- You have a strategy document that reads well but you can't say what would make it fail.
- You suspect the strategy was written backwards - implementation bolted onto a plan nobody analysed properly.
- You want a structured second look at a strategy before committing budget to it.
How to run it
- Name the five Pentagon elements as they stand today: objectives, resources, environment, execution, leadership.
- Check each element against the others - do the resources actually support the objectives, does leadership match the execution demands.
- Trace the Triangle: was there real analysis, a clear formulation, and a workable implementation plan, in that order.
- Flag any Pentagon element that was assumed rather than checked.
- Flag any Triangle stage that was skipped or rushed.
A worked example
Situation. Ngozi Eze ran Eze Textiles, a textile workshop in Lagos, Nigeria, expanding into export markets on a strategy her operations manager had drafted in a week.
Applied. Running the Pentagon check, the objectives and environment were solid, but resources assumed an export licence that hadn't been applied for, and leadership for the export unit didn't exist yet.
Result. She paused the launch, hired an export lead and got the licence moving before restarting. The five elements lined up on the second pass; the first pass had two open gaps hiding in plain sight.
The catch
This isn't a widely documented, single-author framework the way the BCG Matrix or Balanced Scorecard are - treat it as a structured checklist rather than an established academic model, and verify its fit for your context before leaning on it heavily. Its value is in forcing you to name each element explicitly; it doesn't tell you what to do about a gap once you've found one.
Naming a gap in the Pentagon isn't the same as closing it. Someone still has to own the fix.