Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions:

• What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration.

• Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration.

• How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field.

• What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way.

• What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the

capabilities and support the choices.

In great strategies, the where-to-play and how-to-win choices fit together to make the

company stronger.

Considering the dynamic feedback loop between all five choices, strategy isn’t easy. But it is doable. A clear and powerful framework for thinking about choices is a helpful start for managers and other leaders intent on improving the strategy for their business or function. Strategy needn’t be the purview of a small set of experts. It can be demystified into a set of

five important questions that can (and should) be asked at every level of the business: What is your winning aspiration? Where should you play? How can you win there? What capabilities do you need? What management systems would support it all? These choices, which can be understood as a strategic choice cascade, can be captured on a single page.

They can create a shared understanding of your company’s strategy and what must be done to achieve it.

Laying out the conditions: To pursue this possibility, what would have to be true?

CONCLUSION: The Endless Persuit of Winning

“For your own company, ask (and honestly answer):

• Have you defined winning, and are you crystal clear about your winning aspiration?

• Have you decided where you can play to win (and just as decisively where you will not play)?

• Have you determined how, specifically, you will win where you choose to play?

• Have you pinpointed and built your core capabilities in such a way that they enable your where-to-play and how-to-win choices?

• Do your management systems and key measures support your other four strategic

choices?