STRATEGY / CHOICE
Make the trade-off explicit.
Who you serve
The customer or mission need. Why this choice now?
How you win
The capability and evidence behind the business result.
What moves
Money, people and work redirected from an alternative.
One choice. A first action. A measure and a condition for reconsidering it.
Read the diagram
Who you serve: The customer or mission need. Why this choice now?; How you win: The capability and evidence behind the business result.; What moves: Money, people and work redirected from an alternative.. One choice. A first action. A measure and a condition for reconsidering it.
01
Start with the business choice
Choose a question the leadership team needs to resolve: which customers to serve, which markets to enter, which services to expand, or how the business will compete. Explain what those customers value and why they would choose you. For a public or nonprofit organization, start with the people served and the mission outcome.
Use the strategy you already have. If it says only grow, improve efficiency or modernize, make one choice underneath that ambition explicit. Name the alternative you considered and why this option deserves attention now.
02
Explain how the choice will produce a result
Describe what must change in the business for the choice to work. Connect customer demand, service delivery and the economics: revenue, cost to serve, cash, risk or mission performance. Separate what you have evidence for from what you still need to test.
Choose a result measure, its current position and the improvement you are seeking. Add an early signal that tells you whether the approach is working. A system going live is evidence of delivery; the business result still needs its own measure.
03
Move resources behind the decision
Name the capability you need and the teams that must contribute. Then decide what money and capacity move behind the choice, what will wait, and who has authority to resolve competing demands. Preserve essential operations and required commitments when deciding what to pause.
Work out the process, people and information changes before selecting technology. An ERP change, a planning application, RPA or AI may support the strategy. Specify the job it must do so the investment follows the business choice.
04
Make the next action and review useful
Assign one accountable business owner, a first action and a date. Record the most important dependency and the assumption most likely to change the decision. Use an existing leadership review to examine the evidence and decide whether to continue, adjust or stop.
Set a review trigger as well as a date: demand below the agreed level, a service failure, an unavailable dependency or a cost outside the approved range. Choose thresholds that fit your business. You can record one strategic choice now and connect it to the wider portfolio as the other choices become clear.
Example strategy
Grow through reliable service for existing customers
A regional maintenance business is choosing between entering a new territory and expanding recurring service contracts with its existing commercial customers.
- Strategic choice:
Expand recurring contracts for existing customers who value predictable response times. Defer the territory launch until current service capacity can support the promise.
- Business result:
Seek to improve renewal from 80% to 85% over the next annual renewal cycle while keeping contribution per contract at or above its approved baseline. Track quoted-to-signed contracts as an early demand signal.
- What must change:
Operations establishes capacity and scheduling commitments. Sales tests the offer with eligible customers. Finance checks pricing and service cost. The current scheduling system is assessed before a replacement is proposed.
- Resources and first action:
The COO owns the decision. Reassign the planned territory-launch work to the contract offer and capacity check. Sales and operations bring the initial customer response and capacity evidence to the existing monthly review.
- Reconsider when:
Review after four weeks, or earlier if the proposed response times cannot be staffed within the approved cost. Do not expand the offer until operations confirms that it can deliver it.
Keep the next decision clear.
Copy this record into the document you already use with your team. Give an unanswered question an owner and a next action.
Your working record
Strategic choice
- Customers, market or people served:
- To complete
- Value we intend to provide / why they would choose us:
- To complete
- Choice now / alternative deferred:
- To complete
- Business result / baseline / target / period:
- To complete
- Evidence today / assumption still to test:
- To complete
- Capability and team changes required:
- To complete
- Money and capacity assigned / work that waits:
- To complete
- Accountable business owner:
- To complete
- First action / action owner / date:
- To complete
- Critical dependency / owner:
- To complete
- Early signal / review date / trigger to reconsider:
- To complete