Strategy & Positioning

Whether you actually have a strategy — or a long list of activities with an aspirational headline on the front. A strategy is not a plan; a plan executes a strategy. Strategy is securing, owning and defending a valuable position in the mind of your customer. The test is brutal and simple: can someone three layers below the CEO describe the strategy in sixty seconds, in their own words? If not, it does not exist as a strategy — it exists as a document.

Position decides margin. Compete on the same activities done the same way and price becomes the only lever — a race to the bottom where your margin is whatever the cheapest competitor decides. A distinct set of activities producing a distinct outcome is a position no one else occupies, and that is where pricing power, loyalty and defensible growth come from. A real position also tells you where to grow — customer expansion or operating efficiency — instead of running both at half-power.