Playing to Win

Chapter Seven

Think Through Strategy

To this point, we have framed the five questions in the strategic choice cascade (what is your winning aspiration, where will you play, how will you win, what capabilities will you use, and what management systems will you employ?) and argued that all five must be answered, coordinated, and integrated to craft a powerful strategy and lasting competitive advantage. But how and where do you start? And how do you generate and choose between possibilities at each stage? For any company, there are many possible strategic choices that could be selected, an almost infinite amount of data that could be crunched, and a wide array of strategic tools that might be brought to bear on the problem. It can be overwhelming, ...