Goal Core · Strategic goals · Module
Trade-offs
What is deliberately not being pursued, recorded alongside what is. The value of writing it down is that it is available later, when the excluded option returns looking attractive.
The idea
How it works
A strategy that excludes nothing gives no help at the moment two attractive options compete for the same resource — which is the only moment a strategy is genuinely needed.
Exclusions decay. An option refused in January returns in June with a new advocate and no memory of why it was declined, and it is usually accepted the second time simply because nobody can reconstruct the argument. Writing the reason down at the point of decision is the whole defence.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
List what the strategy rules out
Markets, customers, offers, ways of working. Be specific enough that someone could check.
- 02
Record the reason, not just the decision
The reason is what makes it possible to tell later whether the situation has actually changed.
- 03
Name the conditions for revisiting
What would have to be different for this exclusion to be worth reopening?
- 04
Check it annually
Some exclusions should be lifted. The point is that it happens deliberately.
One level in
The components of trade-offs
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
This is the cheapest component in the framework to produce and the most frequently absent. Ten minutes at the point of decision saves an argument a year later.
The other modules in strategic goals
Diagnosis
A plain statement of the challenge the goal exists to answer — what is in the way, and why it matters now. Written before the goal, not reverse-engineered after it.
LearnStrategic themes
The few coherent lines of effort the goals group into, so that separate goals reinforce one another instead of competing for the same people.
LearnHorizon and measures
When the goal is expected to land, and what would count as having landed. One primary measure per goal; a second usually means the first was not trusted.
Learn