Playing to Win

A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin define strategy as an integrated set of choices that positions an organisation to win. Their strategy choice cascade moves from winning aspiration and where-to-play choices to how-to-win, required capabilities and the management systems that make the choices real.

The book’s strength is the connection between competitive positioning and the operating system. A strategy is coherent only when choices reinforce one another: target customers and markets shape the value proposition, which determines the capabilities to build and the systems leaders must use.

For executives, the cascade is a practical way to expose ambiguity and test trade-offs. It can align corporate, business-unit and functional choices, but it works best as a disciplined conversation rather than a form-filling exercise; evidence, creative options and explicit assumptions remain essential.

OutcomesLab profiles Playing to Win because it turns strategy from aspiration into a connected system of choices. It directly supports the Coherence Premium and shows how sustained capability investment compounds advantage.