Playing to Win Strategy Cascade
Map your strategy using the Playing to Win framework: winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities required, and management systems.
About Playing to Win Strategy Cascade
The Playing to Win strategy cascade is a way of describing a strategy as a connected set of five choices. It comes from the book Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin and treats strategy as a series of decisions about where to compete and how to win.
The cascade helps a leadership team be explicit about what the organisation is trying to achieve and what it has decided to do and not do. Each choice frames the next, so the result reads as one logical argument rather than a list of initiatives.
At a glance
- Category
- Strategy
How it is structured
The five choices are the winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, the capabilities required and the management systems. The winning aspiration states what winning looks like. Where to play defines the markets, customers and channels to compete in. How to win explains the basis on which you will beat alternatives. Capabilities are the things you must be good at to win that way. Management systems are the processes and measures that support and sustain those capabilities.
The choices are meant to reinforce one another. If a later choice does not follow from an earlier one, the strategy has a gap that should be resolved.
Use cases
Developing strategy
Structure a leadership discussion so that strategy is expressed as clear, connected choices.
Testing an existing strategy
Check whether current activity actually supports the stated aspiration and choices.
Communicating direction
Give the wider organisation a simple picture of what the strategy is and how it fits together.
How to use it
Tips and common mistakes
- Make real choices. If the answer to where to play is everywhere, no decision has been made.
- Check that each level follows logically from the one above it.
- Keep the language simple enough that people outside the leadership team can repeat it.
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