Before committing to any strategy, great leadership teams pause and answer three foundational questions. Most skip straight to tactics — and wonder why momentum stalls.
In our strategy engagements, the most valuable thing we do in the first two days is slow the leadership team down. Most teams arrive wanting to get to the answer quickly. Our job is to make sure they are asking the right questions first.
Three questions, answered honestly and in order, will expose more strategic risk and opportunity than most month-long strategy processes. They are deceptively simple. They are also deceptively hard to answer well.
Question 1: Where do we actually win today?
Not where you aspire to win. Not where you used to win. Where do you demonstrably, consistently outperform alternatives in a way that customers will pay for? The discipline here is specificity. "We win on quality" is not an answer. "We win with mid-market manufacturing companies in Ireland who need turnaround times under 48 hours" is an answer. The more precisely you can define where you win, the more clearly you can see the strategy needed to extend and protect that position.
"Most businesses have one genuine competitive advantage. They spend most of their resources on activities that are not connected to it."
Question 2: What would have to be true for us to win there in three years?
This question forces the leadership team to be explicit about assumptions. Every strategy rests on a set of beliefs about how the market will evolve, what customers will value, and what competitors will do. Making those assumptions explicit is the single most important step in building a resilient strategy — because it allows you to monitor them and adapt when they prove wrong.
Question 3: What are we willing to stop doing?
This is the question most leadership teams avoid, and it is the one that matters most. Strategy is fundamentally about making choices — and every yes requires a no. Organisations that try to pursue every opportunity simultaneously build complexity, diffuse accountability, and exhaust their best people. The clearest sign of a high-performing leadership team is their willingness to have the uncomfortable conversation about what to deprioritise, defund, and exit.
These three questions do not give you a strategy. But they give you the foundation on which every other strategic decision should rest — and most organisations build strategies without it.