strategyplaybook.aiSqwyz
Sign in
← All 124 tools
Choice · Choose

Playing to Win cascade

Five linked choices that have to hold together. Its real virtue is forcing you to write down what you are not doing, which is the half most strategies quietly omit.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
03 Choose
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Early startup → Large organisation
Time
Half a day, and expect to revisit it

What it is

A. G. Lafley and Roger Martin's framework, developed at Procter & Gamble: strategy is an integrated set of five choices, arranged so each one constrains the next. It is called a cascade because the choices have to flow — an aspiration that does not shape where you play, or a how-to-win that needs capabilities you will never build, means the cascade is broken.

Winning aspiration
What winning means here, for whom, measured how. Not a mission statement. If a competitor could adopt the same sentence unchanged, it is a platitude rather than an aspiration.
Where to play
The specific segments, channels, geographies and categories you choose to compete in — and, crucially, the ones you explicitly do not. A where-to-play without exclusions is a wish list with geography.
How to win
The reason a customer in that space chooses you over the obvious alternative. It must survive the question "why could a competitor not simply copy this?"
Capabilities required
The three to five things you must be genuinely good at for the how-to-win to hold. If it needs fifteen new capabilities, it is not a strategy you can execute.
Management systems
The measures, processes and decision rights that keep the other four choices alive once the away-day is over. The layer that gets skipped, which is why strategies quietly revert.
The mistake people makeTest the cascade by removing a layer. If the strategy still reads the same without it, that layer is decoration and the choices are not really linked.
What it’s forYou need to make and record the actual choices, in a form other people can follow.
What it’s not forYou have not diagnosed the problem yet. The cascade produces confident answers to the wrong question.

How you run it

  1. Set the winning aspirationNot a mission statement. What winning looks like, for whom, measured how. If a competitor could claim it, it is a platitude.
  2. Choose where to play — and where notSegments, channels, geographies, categories. Write the exclusion beside each choice.
  3. Say how you win, specificallyWhy a customer chooses you when the alternative is right there. Then ask why a competitor could not copy it.
  4. Name the capabilities that make it trueThree to five. If it needs fifteen new capabilities, it is not a strategy you can execute.
  5. Check the cascade holdsEach choice should make the one below it necessary. If a layer could be swapped out without disturbing the others, it is decoration.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A completed diagnosis — the core challenge in a paragraph
  • A shortlist of options that survived testing
  • Agreement on who actually decides

You’ll end up with

  • Five choices that follow from each other
  • An explicit exclusion list under where-to-play
  • A named capability set you must build or buy

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAI opportunity mapAssumption mappingBoard paper