Playing to Win: Strategy Choices and Execution Systems
Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley's Playing to Win frames strategy as five choices, not a vision poster. Where will we play? How will we win? What capabilities must be in place? What management systems are required? Those questions force trade-offs that fluffy planning avoids.
For Elevale users, the fifth choice is often the missing piece. Leadership picks a market and a theory of victory, then fails to build management systems that connect direction, objectives, KPIs, and weekly reviews. Strategy lives in the deck. Execution lives in the whirlwind.
This article applies Playing to Win to UK SMEs and shows how to operationalise the five choices in Elevale.
The five choices
1. What is our winning aspiration?
The motivating purpose and definition of winning for the organisation. Not a generic mission statement, but a clear sense of what success looks like at company level.
2. Where will we play?
Markets, segments, geographies, channels, and customers you will serve, and where you will not. Where to play is as much about exclusion as inclusion.
3. How will we win?
Your value proposition and advantage in chosen arenas. Why customers choose you and why that advantage is defensible.
4. What capabilities must be in place?
Activities and competencies required to win where you play, how you play. Capabilities are cross-functional, not department slogans.
5. What management systems are required?
Planning, measurement, incentives, and review rhythms that reinforce the other four choices. This is where strategy meets execution.
Where SMEs typically stop at choice four
Many growing businesses can articulate aspiration, arenas, and even capabilities after a planning day. Management systems remain implicit: a finance export, a project tool, OKRs in slides, and leadership meetings that become status theatre.
Without choice five, the first four choices decay. Teams interpret strategy locally. New initiatives launch without testing fit to "where we play." Capabilities get funded unevenly because nobody sees the whole system.
Elevale exists to make choice five concrete: direction holds choices 1–4 visible; OKRs translate capabilities into quarterly outcomes; KPIs show if the model works; reviews enforce accountability.
Playing to Win mapped to execution
| Playing to Win choice | Execution artifact | Review question |
|---|---|---|
| Winning aspiration | Direction brief, annual priorities | Are we measuring what winning means this year? |
| Where to play | Explicit exclusions in plan | Are new projects in arena or distraction? |
| How to win | Company OKRs on advantage | Did key results move on the theory of victory? |
| Capabilities | Team OKRs, hiring, investment decisions | Which capability gap blocked progress? |
| Management systems | KPI dashboards, weekly check-ins, QBR | Do systems reinforce choices or undermine them? |
Cascade choices, not slides
Playing to Win works when choices cascade with logic. Functional teams should explain how their OKRs support capability building in service of how we win in where we play.
If a team lead cannot connect their objective to choice 2 or 3 in one sentence, either the cascade broke or the work is orphan activity. See how to cascade company goals to teams.
Integrative thinking and trade-offs
Martin's broader work stresses integrative thinking: opposing ideas resolved into a better choice, not compromised into mush. In execution terms, trade-offs must be visible. You cannot play everywhere, win on every dimension, and fund every capability at once.
Leadership reviews should force trade-offs when KPIs and OKRs conflict: margin vs growth, speed vs quality, custom vs productised. Hidden trade-offs produce strategy drift.
Reverse engineering the five choices
Martin recommends reverse engineering: start from a winning outcome and work backward to required capabilities and systems. For a UK professional services firm, the exercise might look like this:
Winning aspiration: become the trusted advisor for mid-market manufacturers on operational efficiency, not generalist consulting.
Where to play: UK manufacturers £10m–£50m revenue, operations and finance leaders, referral and partner channels only (no broad paid ads).
How to win: faster diagnostic than Big Four, fixed-fee engagements with measurable ROI in 90 days.
Capabilities: sector templates, implementation partners, case study library, senior consultant bench.
Management systems: quarterly OKRs on win rate and delivery margin; weekly pipeline review; KPI dashboard on utilisation and repeat revenue.
If choice five is missing, choices one through four live in a PDF while the firm chases any revenue that responds to ads.
Playing to Win vs annual planning theatre
Traditional planning often produces a thick document and implicit choices. Playing to Win forces explicit trade-offs leadership can test each quarter:
- Did we say no to work outside where we play?
- Did investments build capabilities we said we need?
- Did management systems surface when how to win stopped working?
Read strategy execution vs strategic planning for why the document is not the system. Elevale makes choices five visible: direction holds the choices, OKRs test them quarterly, KPIs show market feedback.
Connecting choices to weekly leadership rhythm
Choice five is not a one-off workshop output. It is a calendar:
- Weekly: OKR exceptions, lead measures, commitments (see weekly leadership team meeting agenda)
- Monthly: KPI health, cash, pipeline, constraint signals
- Quarterly: revisit all five choices with evidence, not opinions
When reviews skip a quarter, choices three and four decay first. Teams invent local theories of victory.
Common mistakes
- Skipping "where not to play" so every opportunity gets resourced
- How to win as generic differentiation ("great service")
- Capabilities as values posters, not measurable competencies
- Management systems = buying software without review cadence
Testing choices with evidence each quarter
Playing to Win is not a one-time strategy offsite. Each quarter, leadership should test choices against evidence:
- Where to play: win rate and margin in chosen segments vs segments you said you would avoid
- How to win: customer reasons for choosing you (win/loss notes, NPS drivers)
- Capabilities: hiring and training progress on named competencies
- Management systems: review attendance, OKR update cadence, decision follow-through
If evidence contradicts a choice, update the choice. Do not ignore evidence and add more initiatives. That is how strategy drift masquerades as persistence.
See one-page strategic plan template for a lightweight format that holds all five choices visible.
Lafley and Martin wrote for large enterprises, but the five-choice logic scales down. A 25-person firm still needs explicit where-not-to-play and management systems, or every salesperson and delivery lead invents strategy locally. Choice five is what turns a planning day into a year of aligned execution.
Compare Good Strategy/Bad Strategy for diagnosis and coherence; Playing to Win adds market and capability choices Rumelt assumes you have already clarified.
Who owns choice five?
In many SMEs, the CEO owns choices one through four and nobody owns choice five. Management systems decay because they are everyone's problem and no one's job. Assign an owner: often the MD, COO, or head of operations. Their mandate is review cadence, scoreboard integrity, and OKR hygiene, not running every project.
Choice five without an owner becomes another slide titled "execution excellence" while tools and meetings multiply. Name the owner in your direction brief this quarter.
Next steps
- Document all five choices on one page, including explicit where-not-to-play
- Set company OKRs from choices 3 and 4; set KPIs that test choice 3 in market
- Design choice 5: weekly, monthly, quarterly reviews in one system
- Read strategy books for business execution
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