The Strategy Toolkit
The shelf I wish I had had.
Every word of it is free to read: 92 frameworks across 10 disciplines, each traced back to whoever first put it on paper and honest about when it will waste your afternoon, with playbooks that put them in order for the decisions that come round every year and patterns that name the shape a business is in. I built it after twenty years of too often bringing the wrong kind of thinking to the problem in front of me. About Peter
What is in front of you?
Most real decisions need more than one tool, in an order. These are the ones that come round every year, with the frameworks I would actually reach for and why.
- Planning the year?The board wants a plan and you have a list. Four frameworks that turn the list into choices, including what you will stop doing.
- A big call the spreadsheet cannot settle?Work out what kind of problem it is, rehearse the futures, price the branches, then fail it on paper while you still can.
- Setting a price?Find the job you are hired for, price the value rather than the hours, check the sums, then imagine it has gone wrong.
- Losing money and not sure where?Find out whether each sale makes money, where the losses gather and what is throttling output, before anyone proposes an initiative.
- Not sure who to sell to?Choose whom to serve and whom to decline, learn the job they hire you for, then walk their whole journey.
- Launching something?Work out what customers would hire it to do before your enthusiasm spends the budget.
- Going into a new market?Read the weather, judge whether the industry can pay you, name the risk you are really taking, then choose with your eyes open.
- A team that is not working?Find the layer that is actually broken, tell a fault from a phase, check the team was built for the work, then coach rather than tell.
- Leading a change?Diagnose the culture underneath, respect the physics of unfreezing, run the programme in the right order, and land it person by person.
- Who decides, and who checks?Settle who owns risk and who oversees it, pin decision rights to names, then put the risks on one page.
- Handing the business on?Map who sits where before anyone argues about who is right, then write down who decides, while the goodwill lasts.
- Can we afford it?Four frameworks for the question every owner asks before every decision, in the order that stops the answer being a guess: when the cash runs short, what the thing has to earn, what the accounts say you can carry, and whether it beats doing something else.
- Choosing between options?Make sure you are choosing between the right things, weigh the big choices in the open, sort the long list by what it would do against what it would cost, then agree what gives way when time runs out.
- Something keeps going wrong?Agree what the process is before you argue about it, get every plausible cause onto one page, drill the likely ones to the root, then test the fix small and hold the gain.
- Do we actually have a strategy?Test whether what you have is a strategy or a vision statement, find what you own that is a real advantage, make the one choice most firms avoid, then turn it into measures so it survives the year.
- Which of our businesses deserve the cash?Ask what holds them under one roof, map where the cash is made and where it goes, judge each on its merits rather than its history, then set how much of today you will spend on tomorrow.
Not a decision so much as a shape? The patterns name the shape a business is in.
Not one of these? Tell me what is in front of you.
Not sure what the issue is yet? Start with your ducks.
Or go to the shelves
Every framework, by subject. Each one says what it is for and when to leave it alone.
- Strategy & competitionWhere to compete and how to win: the industry, your position, your options.
- Org, people & executionTeams, culture, change, and getting things done through people.
- Decision-making & prioritisationChoosing between options, structuring a problem, and preparing to decide.
- Operations & processFixing a process that keeps going wrong, and finding the bottleneck.
- Innovation & productNew ventures and new products, from the idea to the first customers.
- Marketing & customerWho to sell to, what to say, and what to charge.
- FinanceCan we afford it, and is the business healthy?
- Customer & productWhat customers are actually trying to do, and whether you help.
- GovernanceWho decides, who checks, and who answers for it.
- RiskWhat could go wrong, how badly, and what to do first.