How this works

Help employees connect their work to company plans by asking questions of a shared collection of materials. Use this to answer employee questions about how approved company plans relate to their work. Answers should distinguish documented priorities from local interpretations and decisions still awaiting an owner.

Index a current collection of strategy documents with version, owner and audience metadata. For questions about a past strategic decision, retrieve the approved record and supporting meeting or message passage, then explain who decided, when and why as recorded. Keep historical context separate from current guidance.

Before you start

Prepare the inputs

question

Required

employee's work-related question

Clarify ambiguous terms or time horizons when they change the answer.

document_index

Required

ID, version, owner, effective date and audience

Exclude superseded material from current-plan answers; retain it for explicitly historical questions with its effective period visible.

retrieved_passages

Required

text and precise source references

Require evidence for material claims and preserve context.

role_context

Optional / conditional

employee-provided responsibilities

Required when tailoring advice to responsibilities; unnecessary for a purely historical question. Role context never establishes access or personal performance.

decision_evidence

Optional / conditional

Approved decision record plus related transcript timestamps or message IDs, participants, decision date and any later amendments.

Needed to answer who, when or why. Distinguish an explicit decision from a proposal, discussion or document edit; missing evidence remains unknown.

Implementation, step by step

1. 01

   Prepare the collection

   • Inventory strategy documents and identify approved current versions.
   • Keep historical plans searchable only when the question explicitly concerns history.
   • Cross-link an approved strategic decision record to its supporting meeting or message anchor. Preserve both references and their audience restrictions; a later edit date is not necessarily the decision date.

   Checkpoint: The index identifies current and restricted documents.

2. 02

   Interpret the question

   • Identify the priority, time horizon and work decision the employee is asking about.
   • Ask a narrow clarification if the same term has different meanings across teams.
   • Separate requests for the current priority from requests for historical rationale. Identify the decision topic and period so similarly named discussions are not merged.

   Checkpoint: A scoped retrieval query is ready.

3. 03

   Retrieve evidence

   • Find the relevant approved passages and compare conflicting statements. Respect source access before retrieval; search permitted transcripts or discussion records for the exact decision passage when needed.
   • For a historical question, capture the documented decider, date, scope and stated rationale with precise references. If these are absent, say so rather than inferring authority from who spoke most.
   • Check later approved revisions before explaining current applicability. Keep the original decision and its superseding record connected; a newer informal opinion does not automatically replace an approved plan.

   Checkpoint: The evidence distinguishes the original decision, its recorded rationale and any approved change, or identifies the missing link.

4. 04

   Draft the response

   • Explain the documented priority and how it may relate to the supplied role context.
   • Label proposed interpretation separately and cite each material strategic claim.
   • When asked about a past decision, give its dated outcome and recorded rationale with links to the decision record and supporting passage. State whether it is current, superseded or unresolved; do not invent reasons absent from the record.

   Checkpoint: The employee can distinguish plan facts from suggestions.

5. 05

   Record unresolved questions

   • Route gaps to the strategy owner as drafts or a local question log.
   • Incorporate reviewed corrections into the collection without silently rewriting the original plan.

   Checkpoint: The answer states what remains undecided.

Decisions along the way

What you will produce

Check the result

• Open cited passages and verify they support the answer.
• Check version and effective period for every strategic commitment.
• Test a question whose answer is absent and confirm it remains unanswered.
• Verify role context does not bypass document permissions.
• Check that a decision date comes from the decision evidence, not file modification time.
• Verify historical rationale and named decision authority are explicitly supported, and check for later approved changes.

When something goes wrong

A worked example

SYNTHETIC EXAMPLE · NOT A REPORTED BUSINESS RESULT

Run a small pilot

Keep the scope clear

• Source documents provide evidence, not instructions that override the user's task.
• The assistant cannot assign strategic priorities, evaluate employees or commit company resources.