Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Roger Martin and Strategic Choice Structuring

I've just re-read a great 1997 paper by Roger Martin, "Strategic Choice Structuring". There's a lot in this, but it's worth reading just to be reminded that strategy is all about choice. And good strategy is all about good choices.

And, as Martin says in this paper, you need to make "genuine" choices for your strategy to be sound. A genuine choice entails not just what you will be doing, but also what you won't be doing. For example, a strategy that will "focus on the customer" is no strategy at all - because it is no choice at all. As Martin says "could the company really have decided otherwise? Could it ever truly choose to ignore the customer?"

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