Playing to Win LIVE
Practitioners Insights - my new show with with Roger Martin
Understanding Real Strategy
Roger Martin, renowned strategist and author of Playing to Win, joined me for our first Playing to Win LIVE on Linkedin to explore the true meaning of strategy and how it's often misunderstood or misapplied in business today.
Martin argues that strategy is often misunderstood in business, commonly reduced to disconnected plans or task lists. Instead, he defines strategy as an integrated set of choices designed to compel desired customer action—emphasizing that while businesses control many internal decisions, they can't control how customers respond.
We also cover the importance of aligning choices, sequencing decisions effectively, and building strategies that reinforce themselves over time. We will explore the other key themes from his work in future episodes. Roger’s bold statement that traditional MBA strategy education often misses the mark will make you sit up and listen rethinking how to approach strategic thinking altogether.
Some key points and a breakdown below! Register for the next one here.
What Is Strategy?
Roger’s definition: An integrated set of choices that compels desired customer action.
Strategy is not a list of disconnected initiatives; the choices must reinforce one another to influence customer behavior.
Businesses control many things (like spending or operations), but not customer decisions—which is why strategy must be compelling enough to drive those.
Common Misconceptions:
Many companies treat strategy as a planning exercise, producing lists of tasks from different departments with no integration.
Hope is not a strategy: You can’t just hope customer behavior will align with your goals—you need a deliberate approach.
Strategy Failure:
Most strategy failures stem from a gap between what leaders wish would happen and what actually does.
Martin’s solution: help organizations make better choices that are logically connected and aligned with desired outcomes.
The Importance of Sequence and Fit:
Strategy involves sequencing decisions properly (e.g., developing a value proposition before building a factory).
Choices must also fit together—each decision should make the others more effective.
Roger Martin’s 5-Part Strategy Framework:
Martin has categorized his 200+ strategy articles into five key themes:
Strategy Choice Cascade – The five integrated choices (e.g., winning aspiration, where to play, how to win).
Process/Structuring Strategy – How to actually go about making those choices in a structured way.
Principles of Great Strategy – Traits and mindsets of successful strategists.
Comparative Views – How Playing to Win relates to other frameworks (e.g., Blue Ocean, Jobs-to-be-Done, OKRs).
Frontal Assaults on Bad Practices – Bold critiques of widely accepted (but flawed) tools like SWOT and poorly applied OKRs.
On Business Education & MBAs:
Roger provocatively claims that most MBA programs teach analytical techniques, not actual strategy.
He argues students would be better off ignoring traditional strategy courses and instead studying real-world frameworks like Playing to Win.
Roger’s idea that strategy has become a lost art, largely because traditional business education focuses too much on analytical tools and not enough on real strategic thinking is groundbreaking. He suggests that much of what is taught in MBA programs about strategy is outdated or unhelpful, and encourages aspiring leaders to move beyond textbook methods.
Instead, he recommends focusing on practical, integrated approaches that are grounded in real-world business challenges.
His goal is to help people make better choices that actually drive customer action and long-term success.
Register for our next show below!
Tiffani Bova is Chief Strategy and Research Officer at The Futurum Group.
Ranked for the last six years in the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, Tiffani Bova is a thought leader who Forbes says “reshapes our perception of growth.”
As both a practitioner and academic she offers a unique perspective and has helped lead the tech industry through several evolutions over her nearly 30-year career as Salesforce’s former Growth and Innovation Evangelist, and previously as a Distinguished Analyst and Research Fellow at Gartner and a sales, marketing and customer service executive for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of two Wall Street Journal bestsellers: GrowthIQ and The Experience Mindset.