Commercial Discipline is the third foundation. It asks whether money is going to the right places for the right reasons: acquisition and retention held in proportion, discounting used as a strategy rather than a reflex, cash flow owned by someone commercial, and returns treated as a lever rather than a service afterthought. The failure cluster is Commercial Misallocation.
The five checks
Are acquisition and retention in proportion?
Is discounting a strategy, never a default?
Is cash flow owned commercially?
Do exchanges protect margin where free returns erode it?
Are returns run as a commercial lever, not a service afterthought?
The self-assessment runs all thirty-six checks in thirty honest minutes and nothing you enter leaves your browser. The Barking Cat Review applies them to your business by walking it as a customer does, measuring what it finds against your numbers, and naming the constraint that is actually binding.
