And that’s what makes winning possible.

In nearly every strategy conversation I have—with a board, a founder, a CEO, or an executive team—the starting point is almost always the same: growth. Leaders want to scale faster, reach further, and achieve more. They set ambitious targets in the hope that urgency will drive performance. They push business units, subsidiaries, product lines, brands, and geographies to develop bold growth plans.

Growth becomes the universal mandate.

And when it does, something subtle but consequential happens: we quietly set teams against one another—fighting for attention, investment, and leadership sponsorship. The pressure to outperform becomes a pressure to outshine the others.

This dynamic becomes particularly visible in traditional strategic planning sessions. Each unit is asked to present its priorities, outline its initiatives, and state its needs. But beneath the data and the ambition lies something more fragile: each team is operating under its own assumptions about the whole—its own interpretation of what the company needs, what matters most, and where growth must come from. And because there’s no shared map, individual goals and plans start to overlap, compete, or even contradict. The strategy process, intended to bring alignment, instead reinforces internal competition.

When we treat growth as the common denominator—as the default goal for every part of the business—we expect different players to run the same race. And when they don’t, we call it misalignment. But the truth is, we never created alignment to begin with.

That’s the real issue. Not that teams lack ambition—but that the system lacks design.

Growth Is Not a Universal Mandate

We tend to assume that growth is the natural path forward for every part of the business. But if we pause to look more closely, we see that this logic quietly collapses under its own weight. Different segments of a company live in different realities. Their markets evolve at different speeds. Their competitive dynamics vary. Some are built for scale. Others are mature, stable, or even declining. Some still need to prove their relevance. Others are strategically vital, even if financially modest. Their realities aren’t comparable—And yet we measure them all with the same yardstick: growth. We ask each one to perform as if they were playing the same game, with the same conditions and the same goals.

It’s a bit like asking every player on a football team to run for touchdowns. The quarterback, the linemen, the kicker, the defense—all trained for entirely different roles—are evaluated as if speed and scoring were the only metrics that matter. But that is not how teams work. They succeed because players have clarity of purpose. Each one is trained, positioned, and pushed to play a specific role—one that serves the team’s overall game plan. It’s that clarity, not sameness, that allows the team to win.

Inside companies, however, we often forget that principle. We chase alignment through pressure instead of design. We demand growth instead of defining contribution. And in doing so, we create internal distortion. Some units overreach and falter. Others grow resentful under misplaced pressure. A few quietly resist, choosing survival over visibility. Meanwhile, strategy meetings devolve into a negotiation of competing narratives, not a construction of a cohesive plan.

And that’s the problem. We start in the wrong place. When we begin from the premise that everything should be equally strategic, equally prioritized, and equally expected to expand, even well-intentioned choices create friction. Until we step back and ask a different question—what is each part of the business truly meant to contribute?— we’ll keep designing plays without knowing who’s meant to pass, defend, or carry the ball. And in doing so, we’ll keep missing the win we’re all trying to reach.

That’s where real strategy begins.

Designing The Playbook

Strategy isn’t just about making hard choices—it’s about making them for the right reasons. And that requires more than ambition. It requires design. If we want our businesses to move with coherence, we can’t just ask each part to push harder. We have to define what each part is meant to do.

That begins by recognizing that not all roles are created equal—and they’re not meant to be. On a football field, you have players whose job is to carry the ball, others who hold the line, some who read the play, and others who protect it. Each one is trained, positioned, and evaluated for a specific purpose—not to maximize personal stats, but to help the team advance. You don’t expect the kicker to block or the lineman to throw. You measure contribution differently because you understand the role they play.

Within a business, some parts are expected to generate the next wave of growth. Others carry the weight of profitability, generating the cash that sustains the business and funds future investment. Some are early experiments, testing what might come next. And some exist to signal identity: to position the company, build trust, or create differentiation that others depend on. You don’t lead all of these the same way. You don’t measure them the same way. And you certainly don’t ask them to perform the same way.

So how do you decide who plays what?

There’s no formula—but there is a disciplined way of thinking. It begins with a series of conversations, guided by data but grounded in perspective. You explore the realistic growth potential of each unit—not in theory, but in the context of your capabilities, timing, and ambition. You look closely at its contribution to profitability or cash flow, understanding not just margins but the dependencies that come with them. And you examine how strategically relevant that unit is to your future—its role in market positioning, in your customer ecosystem, or in strengthening what makes you distinct.

Answering those questions doesn’t produce a checklist. It creates a shared lens—one that helps leadership see the whole system more clearly. When this work is done well, something shifts. Conversations become cleaner. Trade-offs feel less personal. The pressure to turn everything into a growth story fades, and in its place emerges something more durable: a plan with roles, not just goals.

Because in the end, not everyone on the field needs to score.
But everyone needs to know what game they are playing.