Real Choices

07 Dec, 2025

If the opposite of your choice could also be rational, you’ve made a real decision. If not, you’re restating the obvious.

This test cuts through most strategic drift. Companies say they’ve chosen where to compete and how to win, but when you flip their choices, the opposite sounds just as plausible. Which means they haven’t actually chosen anything.

Strategy only becomes real when you decide where to play and how to win, then hold the line long enough for the benefits to compound. Everything else - budgets, structures, metrics - should follow from there.

Start with scope. Where will you compete, and where will you not?

In vertical software the boundaries matter more than the industry label. You might serve healthcare, but the real choices live in the specifics. Enterprise groups or long-tail practices? Core system or compliance layer? Which geography? Which buyer persona?

Test each choice. Could the opposite also be rational? Enterprise versus long-tail - yes, both work, different economics. Core system versus adjacent workflow - yes, both defensible. If flipping your choice sounds absurd, you haven’t made a strategic decision, you’ve just described your current customer base.

Once you’ve drawn the field, decide how you’ll win on it. Two logics work: lowest cost or distinctive value.

Lowest cost means standardise, automate, drive down unit economics. Distinctive value means build deep domain fit, create switching barriers, deliver an experience worth a premium. Both are rational choices. What fails is straddling the middle - selling on features whilst competing on price, investing in differentiation whilst cutting costs.

Test your choice here too. If you say “we win through superior customer service and competitive pricing”, you haven’t chosen. Both opposites being rational is what makes this a real decision.

In vertical markets, advantage often lives in small, compounding details. Regulatory nuances handled cleanly. Workflows that reduce risk. Integrations that remove headaches. The strength comes from a system of reinforcing activities, not a single feature.

This is where most strategies leak. You’ve chosen differentiation, but your roadmap includes cost-cutting that removes the details that create switching costs. You’ve chosen cost leadership, but your sales team sells customisation. The choices sound clear until you trace them through the activity system.

Every decision should reinforce the choice. If you bet on cost, architecture, support, pricing, and sales all need to reflect efficiency. If you bet on differentiation, roadmap, marketing, partnerships, and service need to reinforce distinctiveness.

Fit compounds. Incoherence leaks. The firms with the strongest economics are rarely the widest in scope - they’re the ones whose activity systems align.

Write down where you play in one line. Write how you win in one line. For each, flip it. Does the opposite sound rational? If no, you’re describing what you do, not what you’ve chosen.

Pick cost or differentiation. List the five to seven activities that must reinforce that choice. For each one, ask whether it strengthens your logic or blurs it. Kill anything that blurs.

Review this quarterly. Any project that breaks the boundary or tries to have it both ways fails the test. Fund the system you’ve chosen. Starve the distractions.

The test isn’t just for the initial choice. It’s for everything that follows. If a decision doesn’t reinforce where you play and how to win, you’re drifting.

#strategy