Roger Martin: Playing to Win
Playing to Win helps a leadership team make connected choices about customers, competition, and the capabilities needed to succeed. Roger Martin developed the framework with A.G. Lafley, his coauthor of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. Use it to agree why customers should choose your business before approving growth initiatives.
Watch Roger Martin explain the distinction
The featured Harvard Business Review video is A Plan Is Not a Strategy. Watch Martin explain why spending plans need a clear theory of competitive success.
After watching, ask the team to identify one customer choice that its current plan depends on. Then ask what evidence supports that assumption. The questions and examples below are our application of the framework, not a transcript of the video.
Connect the five choices
The cascade connects the desired outcome to the means of achieving it. Revisit earlier choices when a capability gap or market finding changes what is possible.
| Choice | Write down |
|---|---|
| Winning aspiration | The customer outcome and competitive success the business seeks |
| Where to play | The customers, markets, channels, and activities it will pursue—and exclude |
| How to win | Why those customers will choose it over alternatives |
| Capabilities | The activities it must perform especially well to deliver that advantage |
| Management systems | The measures, responsibilities, and routines that support those activities |
Framework attribution: Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley. See Martin's Playing to Win practitioner series and Why Bother Doing Strategy?.
At corporate level, apply the questions to the portfolio and the parent's contribution. At business level, make the customer and competitive choices specific. If two business units need conflicting capabilities, resolve that conflict before promising a shared operating model.
Make the choices concrete
The following is a hypothetical application to an industrial software group. It is not a case from Martin or Lafley.
| Choice | Illustrative answer | Evidence needed |
|---|---|---|
| Winning aspiration | Become the preferred maintenance workflow for multi-site manufacturers seeking fewer avoidable equipment stoppages | Customer priorities and the outcomes they will pay for |
| Where to play | Existing manufacturing customers with mixed equipment fleets; exclude consumer devices and outsourced maintenance crews | Segment size, buying authority, and sales access |
| How to win | Connect fault diagnosis with repair scheduling across equipment brands, reducing the need to reconcile separate tools | Comparative customer trials and willingness to switch |
| Capabilities | Reliable diagnostics, equipment connectors, and implementation support | Performance tests, technical access, and delivery capacity |
| Management systems | Product and service leaders jointly review deployment outcomes and recurring failure modes | Named owners, customer feedback, and a funded improvement process |
The diagnostic acquisition is one possible way to obtain a missing capability. The strategy remains meaningful if the first target declines to sell.
Test what must be true
Martin describes strategy as a choice under uncertainty and recommends making its underlying reasoning explicit. See Why Bother Doing Strategy?. Translate that principle into tests before making a large commitment.
For the hypothetical software group, start with these assumptions:
| Assumption | Test | Finding that would change the choice |
|---|---|---|
| Customers want diagnostics inside scheduling | Observe users in a combined workflow trial | Customers prefer their existing diagnostic tools |
| Equipment data can support reliable diagnosis | Test representative equipment and operating conditions | Critical assets lack usable data or access rights |
| This buyer can sell and deploy the combined product | Review customer access and trial implementation effort | The sale needs a different buyer or an unaffordable service model |
Set the decision criteria before seeing the results. Record who owns each test and which investment depends on it. Distinguish a failed implementation from evidence against the customer proposition.
Carry the cascade into a mandate
Write a mandate that names the capability gap, the customers it serves, and the advantage it supports. Add the build and partner alternatives, resource limits, and a finding that would stop the search. Make the business sponsor accountable for the customer outcome after any deal closes.
- Turn the choices into a strategy workshop.
- Compare portfolio decisions with BCG and McKinsey.
- Define the strategic framework for M&A.
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