Strategic Choosing

Strategy is often treated as a planning problem when it is really a choosing problem. The information is usually there. What is missing is a frame that makes the tradeoffs visible, agreement about who actually decides, and someone willing to put the hard version of the question on the table.

This is a shorter, sharper engagement than strategic planning. It exists because organizations get stuck.

Typical situations

• A capital project that has been studied twice and approved zero times
• Two viable partners, two very different futures, and a board split down the middle
• A business line that is not working, and no one wants to be the person who says so
• A repositioning decision where the cost of waiting is real but unspoken

How it works

I get up to speed on what has already been done, then rebuild the choice: what is genuinely being decided, what each path requires and forecloses, what has to be true for each to work, and what the organization would need to see to change its mind.

Then we clarify decision rights. A surprising share of stuck decisions are stuck because no one is certain whether this is a board call, a CEO call, or a committee recommendation.

Then we hold the session where the decision gets made.

What you get

A decision memo, an options frame the board can hold, a facilitated session, and a documented decision with its rationale and its tripwires. Usually four to eight weeks.

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