I’m working with a leadership team that’s struggling to implement a strategy in their organization. They’ve got all the normal challenges that make strategic planning difficult:  lots of moving parts, too many stakeholders to manage, and too much firefighting happening to possibly think about tomorrow.

There’s one leader, John, who is starting to have some success, and he highly recommends HBR’s Playing to Win Strategy Toolkit. He bought it when it first came out a couple of years ago and then it took him a couple of years to actually read it. The best thing about it? The case studies. We all know that there’s a strategy framework that will give you step-by-step guidance of what you should do to plan and execute strategy in your organization.

What is out winning aspiration?

Where will we play?

How will we win?

What capabilities must we have?

What management systems are required?

Of course, it rarely works out like that. John is finding he’s getting stuck on the third question: how will we win? His organization wants to be all things to all people – and narrowing that down and changing the culture is proving challenging.

If you only have an hour (and even that is tough to carve out), check out the webinar from the author of this series Roger Martin.