The methodology
We have not invented our own strategy framework. We have adopted Roger Martin's Playing to Win without modification.
Wizdim's purpose and values layers are additive. They reflect our view of their relationship to strategy and their importance as binding elements of organisational Intent.
Roger Martin
Former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, named the world's number one management thinker by Thinkers50 in 2017, an advisor to the CEOs of global companies, and the author of decades of published strategy work. He continues to teach the method at scale.
Playing to Win
Co-authored with A.G. Lafley, P&G's CEO during its most successful strategic era, and published by Harvard Business Review Press, Playing to Win is the standard text on business strategy. It condenses Martin's strategy practice into a single integrated cascade.
What strategy is
Martin's working definition: strategy is an integrated set of choices that compels a desired customer action. Not an aspirational document, and not a plan.
Winning Aspiration
What does winning look like commercially in this horizon?
Where to Play
Which markets, segments, channels, and geographies?
How to Win
What is the basis of competitive advantage?
Capabilities
What distinctive activities does the business need to do well?
Management Systems
What repeatable processes develop and sustain those capabilities?
Two supporting elements
Playing Field, the structural shape of the chosen market, and Winning Logic, the argument that connects the choices into a coherent whole.
A plan is not a strategy. A plan is a list of activities; a strategy is a set of choices about where to play and how to win, made to hold together.
Purpose and the Winning Aspiration
Strategy methodologies tend to compress purpose into a commercial slot, a Winning Aspiration, but the two are not the same thing.
Purpose answers why the business exists at all. It is timeless: a fundamental objective, regardless of strategy, market conditions, or commercial pressure. The Winning Aspiration is the commercial expression of purpose for the current strategic horizon, time-bounded, typically three to five years, in service of the purpose.
Purpose can outlive multiple Winning Aspirations, preserving continuity through strategic pivots. It also gives the Intent alignment assessment two distinct reference points: a candidate decision is checked against both, and the failure modes differ.
A coffee company's purpose, to make the world's mornings better, may outlive successive Winning Aspirations, from leading speciality retailer in three African markets to expansion into five European cities, without changing identity.
Values follow the same additive logic: binding elements of Intent, not published sentiment. A value is only operative if it would refuse some action the business would otherwise be tempted to take.
What Would Have To Be True
Martin calls this the most valuable question in strategy. Most strategy debates ask "is this option correct?", which triggers confirmation bias and ends in an argument. His question flips the frame: "what would have to be true for this to be the best option we could choose?".
That produces a list of testable conditions across three perspectives: customers and how they respond, the company's own capabilities and systems, and how competitors react. The barrier condition is the one you most doubt: the assumption that, if it fails, the strategy fails.
Wizdim captures these conditions and re-tests them on a cadence. When a condition starts to fail, the strategy is revisited, even if the rest of the business is humming.
The Responsibility Ladder
Martin's Responsibility Ladder, first set out in 2002 and restated in 2026 for the AI era, treats responsibility as a ladder of autonomy between human and AI, not a binary delegation.
Wizdim routes every assessed decision to a recommended rung. Strategically consequential decisions always stay human-led; they are never delegated to an averaging engine.
Go to the source
Optimal use of Wizdim requires deep familiarity with Martin's Playing to Win. The original work is not optional background; it is the operating manual.
Roger Martin
rogerlmartin.com
Essays, the Playing to Win practitioner's toolkit, and current writing.
Visit →The book
Playing to Win at HBR Press
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, the expanded edition with bonus HBR articles.
Buy →Watch: a plan is not a strategy
Roger Martin for HBR Quick Study, 2022, about ten minutes. Companion article: A Plan Is Not a Strategy.
Wizdim has no affiliation with, and no endorsement from, Roger Martin. The credit is ours to give; the framework is his.