Roger L. Martin wrote an article for Harvard Business Review titled Strategic Choices Need to be Made Simultaneously, Not Sequentially (April 3, 2017).
« Many people ask me why Capabilities and Management Systems are part of strategy when they are really elements of execution. That is yet another manifestation of the widespread, artificial, and unhelpful attempt to distinguish between choices that are “strategic” and ones that are “executional” or “tactical.” Remember that, regardless of what name you give them, these choices are a critical part of the integrated set of five choices that are necessary to successfully guide the actions of an organization. »
« the Strategy Choice Cascade »
« no meaningful Where to Play choice exists outside the context of a particular How to Win plan. »
« For example, Uber made a Where to Play choice that included China because it’s a huge and important market. But being huge and important didn’t make that choice inherently meritorious. It would have been meritorious only if there had been a clear How to Win as well — which it appears there never was. Microsoft made a Where to Play choice to get into smartphone hardware (with its acquisition of Nokia’s handset business) because it was a huge and growing market, seemingly adjacent to Microsoft’s own, but it had no useful conception of how that would be twinned with a How to Win — and it lost spectacularly. »
Roger L. Martin coauthored Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works with former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley.
Articles of Interest 