5 essential questions to craft a winning strategy | Roger Martin (author, advisor, speaker)

Constructing strategic possibilities, especially ones that are genuinely new, is the ultimate creative act in business.

When a strategy succeeds, it seems a little like magic, unknowable and unexplainable in advance but obvious in retrospect.

I’ve come to see that sound strategic thinking (once you have clarity of vision) boils down to having insightful, empirically validated answers to three essential questions: Where to place our big bets? How to protect our flanks? How to extend our victories?

1. Having a coherent strategy—one that coordinates policies and actions. A good strategy doesn’t just draw on existing strength; it creates strength through the coherence of its design. Most organizations of any size don’t do this. Rather, they pursue multiple objectives that are unconnected with one another or, worse, that conflict with one another.

What is important about this strategy development process is that it represents not just a one-time event, but a shift in the ongoing management processes of the firm. It puts in place a “conscience” mechanism which forces each practice area to consider (and, over time, reconsider) how it is operating, where it is going, and how it plans to compete