Gbiz Commercial Awareness

---
name: gbiz-commercial-awareness
description: Builds a weekly Commercial Awareness Briefing, with three business stories, what happened, why each matters, a "so what for this employer" you write and Claude challenges, a question you could ask, sources linked, kept as a running page. Use for "run gbiz-commercial-awareness", "commercial awareness", "business news this week for my interview", "what challenges does our business face", "weekly news briefing", "keep up with the industry", "commercial awareness for assessment centre", "so what for this employer", part of the Claude for Business Graduates Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Commercial Awareness Briefing

## When To Use
You are asked "what challenges does our business face" and only have headlines. The briefing is a weekly habit that answers: which stories this week touch this employer's money, market or customers, and what you think that means, in your own words.

## When Not To Use
If you need one company understood in depth, run the Company Research Brief once. If you need a structured scan of a whole sector, use the PESTLE Analysis. This skill is fifteen minutes a week, not a report.

## Inputs
- The employer or sector you are following, and what you know about how it makes money
- Stories you have seen this week (links or pasted text), or permission to search for them
- Your last briefing page, if you keep one in a Project
If you have none of this, I start from the employer's name and this week's public news, and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
Commercial awareness as TARGETjobs describes it covers how the organisation makes money, its market and competitors, the trends around it, and the bottom line, and employers test it with questions like the main challenges facing the business. Each story gets Mike Caulfield's SIFT checks: stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, trace it to the original. The judgement is the "so what", and it has to be yours. The failure it prevents: repeating a headline in an interview, then going blank at "and what would that mean for us?"

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: which employer or sector, what you already know about how it makes money, and whether you use web search and a Project for the running page.
2. Pick three stories from the past week that touch the employer's business model, market, competitors, trends or bottom line. Each has a dated source traced to the original; a story only covered by a rewrite of a press release is flagged.
3. For each story, write what happened in two lines of fact only, then why it matters for the sector.
4. You write the "so what for this employer" first, in your words: revenue, cost, customers, competitors or regulation. Claude challenges it (what is the evidence, what else could explain it, what would change your mind) and never writes it for you.
5. Add one question you could ask in an interview or a team meeting, open and specific to the story.
6. File the week at the top of the running page, newest first. Once a month, update the "themes so far" list from the entries.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Commercial Awareness Briefing
Following: [employer or sector] | Week of: [date]
## This week
| Story | What happened (facts) | Why it matters for the sector | So what for this employer (yours) | Question you could ask | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [headline] | [two lines] | [effect] | [your words] | [question] | [link, date] |
## Claude's challenges
- [Story]: [the question that tests your "so what"]
## Themes so far (updated monthly)
- [Theme] | Weeks it appeared: [dates] | What you think it means: [your words]
## Earlier weeks
[Previous entries, newest first]
## Decision
[You] decide by [day] next week which theme you will raise if asked about the business's challenges, and check its source again first.
```

## Done When
- Three stories, each dated and traced to its original source
- Every "so what" is in your words and has been challenged once
- Each story has one open question you could ask
- The week sits at the top of the running page, and themes are current for the month

## Quality Bar
- Facts and opinion stay apart: "what happened" carries no judgement.
- Stories about named executives stay on public facts and business effect; no speculation about individuals.
- No invented figures or quotes; if a number is in the story, it carries the source.
- Three stories you understand beat ten you skimmed.
- Claude finds and checks stories; the "so what" is yours and you can explain it.

## Next
Run gbiz-issue-tree (Issue Tree) to take a business question into analysis.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).