124 strategy tools

Buying is a live option for reaching a capability, a market or a scale you have decided you need.

You are considering moves beyond the core and need to see which are genuinely adjacent.

Something has finished, well or badly, and you want the learning while it is fresh.

AI capability is moving from experiment to production and nobody has explicitly decided who owns it structurally.

The organisation is being asked what it is doing about AI and every answer is a pilot.

You are evaluating or building AI capability and need to know what obligations attach to it before committing resource, not after.

Partnering has been chosen as the route to a capability and the specific terms of the alliance now need designing.

The issue tree exists and somebody is about to start gathering evidence.

You need to force coverage of growth options rather than defaulting to more of the same.

The strategy rests on beliefs that should be checked at intervals rather than assumed forever.

You want to separate what you know from what you are betting on.

You want to know what would have to be true for the ambitious option to work.

You have a clear picture of a desired future and need the path back to now.

You have a portfolio of products or units and need to decide where money goes.

A programme has been approved on a business case and delivery is about to start.

A decision needs to go to a board with the reasoning, options and recommendation laid out.

A decision needs a financial answer and there is no model to sensitise.

You need the whole business model visible on one page, especially before changing part of it.

You need to know what the business cannot currently do, and what closing that costs in money and months.

You need an honest read on whether the organisation can do the thing before you commit to it.

A change is being planned and the approach has not yet been chosen, or has been chosen out of habit rather than tested against this specific situation.

The strategy changes how people work and you need to know who is affected and how much.

The strategy is agreed and needs turning into a small number of sequenced moves.

You want to know whether your margins, costs and ratios are normal for businesses like yours.

You are about to make a visible move and need to know what rivals and channel partners will do about it.

You need a structured read on who you are up against and how they make money.

You need to understand one competitor properly — how they make money, what they are good at, where they are exposed.

A genuinely new capability, product or technology is being developed and you need to know whether the business is positioned to capture the value from it.

You need to know what this business is genuinely better at than the alternatives.

A group with several businesses is questioning what the centre is actually for, or is considering a restructure, spin-off or demerger.

You suspect your input costs are out of line and need evidence before renegotiating.

You need the financial case, including the consequences people usually leave out.

Margin is falling and the mix has changed, or price is being set without knowing what service actually costs.

Your sector's answers all look the same and you want a genuinely different move.

A strategy keeps failing to land despite the logic being sound, and the cause is suspected to be cultural rather than structural.

Your strategy rests on beliefs about customers that nobody has actually checked with a customer.

The problem is somewhere in the experience and you cannot tell where.

Decisions are taking too long, being remade, or nobody can say who made the last one.

The strategy is written and you need it as slides, in a specific house style.

A new, smaller entrant is gaining ground and the board wants to know whether it is a genuine disruptive threat or an ordinary competitive one.

A business unit or asset's fit with the portfolio is in genuine question and the default answer of keeping it has not been tested.

You need the first hour of a financial diagnostic and want to know whether a returns problem is a margin problem, an asset-efficiency problem or a leverage problem before analysing further.

You want to redesign the offer, including deciding what to stop doing.

CSRD, SECR or an equivalent obligation applies, or a client, investor or lender is asking a sustainability question the business cannot yet answer with evidence.

The strategy is accumulating claims and you need to know which are evidenced, by what, and how strongly.

You want to know what is already established before commissioning anything new.

You have the full strategy and need the version an executive will actually read.

A specific assumption has been identified as the one most likely to break the case, and needs testing rather than continuing to be believed on faith.

You need somebody who has already lived the thing you are about to attempt.

You want to know what evidence would prove the strategy wrong, before you commit.

Before research starts, when the team knows enough to have a view and has not admitted to one.

The organisation is running multiple innovation initiatives without a stated strategy connecting them, and needs one before the next initiative is chosen.

You are raising and need the strategy told as a story an investor recognises.

You have a question big enough that nobody can answer it directly, and work is about to start.

You want to know what customers actually hire you for, in their language, not your product categories.

You are starting something that might not work, and want the stopping conditions agreed while nobody is invested.

You need to see how day-to-day metrics roll up into the outcomes you care about.

You want to know the strategy is working before the P&L tells you.

You are sketching a new venture or line, and risk matters more than completeness.

You need a capability you do not have and must choose how to get it.

International expansion is a genuine option and you need to choose which markets and how to enter them, rather than following wherever the CEO has been on holiday.

You need a defensible number for how big something is, and the two methods to disagree with each other so you can see where the uncertainty sits.

You need to know where the organisation will fail to deliver the strategy.

Regulators, government, media or activist pressure are materially shaping the competitive position and the organisation has no deliberate strategy for engaging them.

You are about to present something contested and want the hard questions in advance.

You need the strategy expressed as measurable outcomes people can work toward.

You are a consultant and need to turn this thinking into a proposal.

You are connecting a desired outcome to opportunities and then to specific solutions.

You are about to choose between two options, which almost always means you have not looked hard enough.

The target operating model is agreed and the structure has to follow it.

External forces are moving — regulation, technology, demographics — and you need them on one page before planning.

Value in your market is moving from products to networks and you need to see your position in it.

You need to make and record the actual choices, in a form other people can follow.

You want to know whether this industry structurally permits anyone to make money, and where profit will sit in three years.

An acquisition has completed, or is far enough along that integration must be planned before close.

A decision is nearly made and you want the objections while they are still cheap.

You need to know where your prices actually sit against the market, not where you assume they sit.

You suspect you are leaving money on the table, or discounting reflexively.

You are deciding where to play in a chain you do not currently own all of.

A strategy keeps failing on a disagreement nobody has surfaced about what the organisation is fundamentally for, or a hybrid organisation needs its commercial and mission purposes reconciled.

Work is stalling because nobody is clearly accountable.

A big commitment could be broken into staged bets with decision points.

The room agrees too easily and you want the case against, argued properly.

Regulation could constrain or open the strategy and nobody has checked what is coming.

The strategy is new but the budget still matches last year's strategy.

What you sell is right but how you charge for it may not be.

The plan is agreed and needs its risks named, ranked and owned.

You need the sequence visible — what comes before what, and why.

You need to strip a sprawling plan back to the actual strategy: the problem, the approach, the actions.

You have a shortlist of real options and need a defensible way to choose between them, not a way to justify the one you already like.

Genuine, published scenario work already exists for this sector or geography, and the job is to select and tailor rather than construct from nothing.

The future genuinely could go several ways and you need a strategy that survives more than one.

You are trying to serve everyone and doing it averagely.

The financial case rests on assumptions and you need to know which actually move the answer.

You want an early read on what competitors and the market are about to do, from public traces.

The strategy needs people to back it and you are unsure who actually decides.

The analysis is finished and has to become something a decision-maker reads.

The market has several distinct competitive clusters and you want to see the empty space.

The strategy exists but nobody can repeat it back to you.

You need to design who looks at what, how often, and what they can change without escalating.

A strategy session is being planned and the design of the room itself has not been deliberately thought through.

You want to know how easily customers can leave, and what would actually hold them.

You need a fast shared picture of where you stand and the team has never written one down.

The strategy needs capabilities you would have to hire, and you do not know if they exist at a price you can pay.

You need to know whether an opportunity is big enough to be worth the trouble.

Delivering the strategy needs the organisation to work differently, not just harder.

You need to balance defending today against building tomorrow, and the split keeps collapsing into today.

The strategy needs explaining to the whole business in plain language.

A SWOT has been done properly and needs to become a set of candidate options, rather than sitting as a list nobody acts on.

You want the strategy to survive contact with next quarter's pressure.

You have a list of trends and need to know which actually touch your business.

Performance has deteriorated to the point that cash, covenants or stakeholder confidence are now the binding constraint, not strategy.

Growth is not turning into profit and you need to know whether the unit works at all.

Revenue and profit are in different places and you need to know which links actually create value.

A multi-year value ambition has been set and needs to be reconciled to the specific, accountable sources that would actually produce it.

Everyone in your market competes on the same handful of factors and you suspect that is the problem.

You need to test whether what you offer matches what customers are trying to get done.

You have raw customer feedback and need the pattern in it.

You want to test whether a claimed strength is a durable advantage or just something you happen to be good at.

You want to see how parts of your value chain will evolve, and where to build versus buy.

You have several options, agreed criteria, and need a defensible comparison.

You are setting or resetting a price and the only evidence is what everybody else charges.

You are losing deals and the sales team's explanation is always price.

AI or automation is materially changing what a role or a set of roles requires, and the structural decisions need to be made before anyone is told anything.