Move guide
Set the goals and make the choices
Your report suggested a move on at least one of these three practices:
- whether goals are agreed and owned;
- whether real choices have been made;
- whether the choices reinforce each other.
This move guide turns goals into choices. Each choice says what you will do, where, and what you will stop or not start. Then every major initiative is checked against the choices.
1. When it applies
Use this move guide if your report placed any of these three practices in the lowest two stages.
| Practice | Where it may sit today | Where this move guide aims |
|---|---|---|
| Whether goals are agreed and owned | Lagging: "The goals ARE the strategy, e.g. a revenue number and a percentage, with nothing underneath." Basic: "Financial targets exist; what the business wants to become is anyone's guess." |
Competent: "Three-to-five-year goals are agreed by the leadership, financial and otherwise, and written down." |
| Whether real choices have been made | Lagging: "The strategy is a list of goals (e.g. grow revenue, improve margins, delight customers) with no choices attached." Basic: "Priorities exist but nothing was ruled out; every market, product and initiative survived." |
Competent: "Explicit where-to-play and how-to-win choices exist, and some genuine options were rejected." |
| Whether the choices reinforce each other | Lagging: "The strategy's initiatives pull in different directions and compete for the same people." Basic: "Initiatives are individually sensible but don't add up to anything cumulative." |
Competent: "Initiatives visibly follow from the choices and mostly reinforce one another." |
If all three already sit at the middle stage or higher, skip this move guide.
If your report gave the foundation moves, this is the third step of one strategy cycle. It follows knowing your own numbers and your market and facing the real challenge.
2. What to do
Four steps. They take two to four weeks, in working sessions.
- Agree the three-to-five-year goals in one session. Cover the financial goals, the operational ones, and what the business means to become. Write them on half a page. The goals-aspiration worksheet does this.
- Develop real options. Put at least two genuine alternatives beside the plan you favour. Table A below records them.
- Turn each goal into a choice: what you will do, where, and what you will stop or not start. Keep it to one page. The choices worksheet does this.
- Map the major initiatives against the choices. Stop or fix the ones that support no choice. The coherence worksheet does this.
The three free worksheets do the recording:
- /worksheets/strategy/goals-aspiration for the goals;
- /worksheets/strategy/choices for the choices page;
- /worksheets/strategy/coherence for the initiatives against the choices.
Five choices that should hang together
One way to check the choices comes from A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin's book Playing to Win. It treats a strategy as five linked choices, each following from the one before.
- What winning means
- The aim, stated in terms of customers and rivals as well as a number
- Where you compete
- The customers, segments, products, channels and regions you choose
- And the ones you leave
- How you win there
- Why those customers will choose you over the alternatives
- The capabilities it needs
- The few things you must be very good at to win there
- The systems behind them
- The measures, budgets and routines that build and keep those capabilities
Write one line for each. Then check that each follows from the one above it.
| Choice | Our answer, in one line | Follows from the choice above? |
|---|---|---|
| What winning means | ||
| Where we compete | ||
| How we win there | ||
| The capabilities it needs | ||
| The systems behind them |
3. What to produce
One table, plus the three worksheets above.
Table A. The options, and what was chosen
| Goal | Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 | Chosen | What it stops or does not start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A choice with nothing in the last column is a wish.
4. A worked example
Illustrative. Written for this move guide. It describes no client.
A specialist insurer writes property and liability cover for small businesses through brokers.
The goals.
- The first list had nine goals, led by "grow premium". The leadership cut it to three: a return on capital, a combined ratio, and becoming the broker's first call for trade businesses.
The options.
- For growth, it set three options side by side: enter a new state, add a product line, or deepen the trade segment.
- It chose the trade segment. It dropped the new state for now and closed one product it had sold to every segment.
The initiatives.
- Of twelve initiatives, eight supported a choice. Two were folded into others and two were stopped.
One month on.
- 3 goals, down from nine
- 2 options considered and rejected
- 2 initiatives stopped
On a retake, all three practices could be answered at the middle stage.
What it looked like in our work
From our own work. Redrawn.
An asset finance business set its priority areas from its market review. It also wrote down what it would put less weight on.
| Dimension | Chosen as priorities | De-emphasised |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | Corporate, employee, small business, brokers, government | Brokers, for one of the de-emphasised product classes |
| Industries | Financial services, mining, business services, government, education and health | |
| Products | Its main lease types, and services | A third lease type, kept only as part of a wider portfolio |
| Assets | Two main product classes | Two other product classes, considered only in a bundle with the main ones |
The last column named what the business would do less of.
Options in three places
Illustrative.
Look for options in three places before choosing. Most plans cover the first and miss the second.
- 1. Strengthen your positionWiden your cost or service lead in segments that are worth winning, or build a new source of advantage.
- 2. Shift the mixGrow your share of the better segments, and leave the ones that do not pay.
- 3. Make a segment more attractive for youRaise the barriers to entry, or reduce your exposure to powerful buyers, suppliers and substitutes. Never by coordinating with competitors.
Aspiration, themes and business cases
Illustrative.
Read a strategy at three levels. One aspiration ties it together. A few themes bridge to it. Each theme holds business cases, each a next step on a staircase that builds a capability (after Baghai, Coley and White).
- Aspiration One aim, with a number and a purpose. Here: lead the region's core market and add a service business.
- Themes A few directions that bridge to it. Here: grow the core, enter a new segment, build the capabilities.
- Business cases Each a next step on a staircase. Here: reprice the key accounts, pilot in one region, one customer system.
5. Effort and dependencies
- Chief executiveRuns the working sessions and drafts the choices page.
- Leadership teamAgrees the goals and argues the options.
- BoardAgrees the result.
What you need
- The diagnosis from facing the real challenge.
- The list of current initiatives, with an owner for each.
How long
- Two to four weeks.
What gets in the way. We have seen these in our own work:
- Choices that come back. A financial services business ruled out two options, then added them back to the work plan a month later.
- Goals in words only. The same business agreed goals as phrases such as "substantially larger", with initiatives whose cost and benefit boxes were blank.
- Better execution, weaker strategy. Across the reviews we did for it, its execution improved each time while its strategy went backwards.
6. How will you know it worked?
The test is whether a team can use the choices to turn down a proposal. Retake the check after the next planning round. Each of these should be true when you answer:
| Practice | You can answer Competent when | A document alone does not count if |
|---|---|---|
| Whether goals are agreed and owned | Three-to-five-year goals are agreed by the leadership, financial and otherwise, and written down. | The goals are a revenue target with nothing else. |
| Whether real choices have been made | Explicit choices of where to play and how to win exist, and some genuine options were rejected. | Every option is still on the table. |
| Whether the choices reinforce each other | The initiatives visibly follow from the choices and mostly reinforce one another. | The initiative list is the same as before the choices were made. |
The worked example is illustrative.
Think we've used your work without proper credit? Tell us and we'll fix it.