Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin

Strategy is five linked choices, starting with where to play and how to win.

Three takeaways for AI PMs

• Strategy is made four levels down
• Where to play is the choice you are skipping
• How to win is judged by customers, not by the deck: Martin's sign that you are not winning: customers look at your product and a rival's and could flip a coin.

Do this Monday

• Before your next roadmap review, write the five cascade answers for your area on one page, and mark any answer that is a vendor or model name as unanswered.
• In your next customer call, ask the user how they would choose between you and the nearest alternative; if the answer is a shrug, log it as a how-to-win gap.
• This week, make Martin's betterment move: name the single most painful gap between the outcome you have and the one you want, and change one choice in the cascade to close it.