Preferred Strategy Sheet

Turn the option you chose into a page that anyone in the organization can explain: where you play, how you win, what you will not do, what it takes and how you will know it works. Then test it on three people.

Practitioner distillations, not tested research. The Playing to Win cascade (Lafley & Martin, 2013) and the strategy statement (Collis & Rukstad, 2008) are widely taught but have not been independently tested. The regulatory row is this library's addition. Scales and time horizons are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You have shortlisted options in 7.7 Strategic Option Cards and need to commit to one in writing.
• You must brief a team, a board, a bank or investors on a direction, and want everyone to retell it the same way.
• The strategy changed, or it is a year since you last wrote it down.

Skip it when:

• You are still choosing between options: go back to 7.7 Strategic Option Cards.
• You need dated work packages, not a direction: use 7.13 Strategy Roadmap (12-24 months) after this page.

This sheet rests on two pieces of consulting practice. Playing to Win (Lafley & Martin, 2013) frames strategy as linked choices: an aspiration, where to play, how to win, the capabilities required and the management systems that sustain them. The force is in the linkage, since a how-to-win your capabilities cannot deliver is a story, not a strategy. Collis and Rukstad (2008) add the communication claim: most executives cannot state their own strategy simply, and a strategy that cannot be said cannot steer daily decisions.

Neither framework has been independently tested. The mechanism is plausible and simple: explicit, linked, sayable choices are harder to fudge and easier to act on than a vision paragraph. The page follows that logic. The statement is short on purpose. The not-doing list exists because a choice that excludes nothing is not a choice. And the retelling test is the field test of the whole document: if three people retell it three ways, rewrite the statement. Do not brief harder.

Use the form "We will win [customers] in [markets] by [how we win], because [advantage]." Aim for about 35 words, the length Collis and Rukstad use as their test.

Strong answer: "We will win hotels in the second city by guaranteeing next-day laundry from a second line at our plant, because rivals need two to three days and we have lost no customer in three years." Not: "We will be the best laundry partner for our customers."

Strategy name:

Strategy statement:

Chosen from (7.7): Option Date decided: Decided by (role):

Illustrative example: the business and all numbers are made up. It continues the laundry from 7.6 and 7.7, option C with B as a bridge.

Statement: "We will win hotels in the second city by guaranteeing next-day laundry from a second line at our plant, because rivals need two to three days and we have lost no customer in three years."

• Aspiration: eight hotel contracts in the second city within 24 months, without a late delivery to current customers.
• Where to play: hotels in the second city; direct sales by the owner; a local laundry as a bridge for the first contracts.
• How to win: next-day pickup and delivery, guaranteed in the contract.
• Capabilities: route planning, a second shift, quality control of the bridge partner.
• Regulatory: check whether the added capacity affects the plant's environmental permit, and whether the second shift is covered by the collective agreement.
• Management systems: weekly delivery report, monthly review with the plant manager.
• Not doing: large hospital tenders; restaurants in the second city; a second plant before eight contracts.
• Change course if: fewer than three hotels signed by month nine, or on-time delivery below target two months in a row.

Retelling test: two of three staff got the customer and the promise but not what is excluded, so the owner added "no hospitals, no second plant" to the statement.