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.