Prioritizing Themes
A quarterly exercise where the firm ranks its themes and sub-sectors against macro factors, recent signal, and deal experience to align priorities and sharpen sourcing.
The best thematic programs are not static. Markets move, macro conditions shift, and the firm's own experience with companies in a space changes what matters. This module covers a simple but powerful quarterly exercise: put every active theme and sub-sector on the board, debate their relative priority, and capture the ranking so the whole firm knows where to focus.
The exercise
Once a quarter, gather the team and put every active theme and sub-sector on the board. Start with the themes alone — no pre-work, no canned rankings. The goal is an open debate about what matters most right now, grounded in three inputs:
- Macroeconomic factors — interest rates, policy shifts, supply-chain dynamics, and geopolitical events that change the attractiveness of entire sectors.
- Recent news and signal — what has broken in the last ninety days that validates or undercuts a thesis.
- Experience with actual companies — the deals you saw, the calls you took, the patterns that repeated or failed.
Rank them. Literally stack-rank the themes and, where useful, the sub-sectors inside them. The conversation itself is valuable — it surfaces disagreements, forces articulation of conviction, and gives junior team members a clear view of how the firm thinks. The output is even more valuable: a living priority list that tells everyone, without ambiguity, where the firm is focused this quarter.
Cadence
Quarterly is the right rhythm for most firms. Monthly is too much overhead; annually is too slow for markets that move this fast. Many firms already run a version of this exercise in some form — usually buried inside an off-site or a partner meeting. The discipline is to make it explicit, repeatable, and captured.
Capturing the ranking
Do not let the output live in someone’s notebook. Date the ranking, record the rationale, and save it where the whole firm can find it. Over time you build a longitudinal data set — how priorities shifted from quarter to quarter, what macro events drove the changes, which themes persisted and which faded. That history is incredibly valuable: it trains your AI systems, sharpens your internal communication, and keeps the team aligned as individuals work on separate deals.
What comes next
Once the firm knows what matters most, the next step is to turn that conviction into sourcing action. See Module 05 · Weaponizing the Pipeline for how to connect ranked themes to the companies you actually reach out to.