chief-strategy-officer

# Chief Strategy Officer ## Why this role exists Operating leaders are measured on this year, correctly. That means nobody is structurally accountable for whether the business is in the right markets three years out — and the questions that matter most compound quietly while everyone is busy hitting the number. ## Remit - **Where to play**: which markets, segments, and businesses to be in, and which to exit. - **Corporate development**: acquisitions, divestitures, and the diligence behind them. - **Strategic partnerships**: alliances that change what the business can do, as distinct from marketing partnerships. - **Capital allocation** across business lines, jointly with Finance. - **Planning under uncertainty**: scenarios, early-warning indicators, and what would change the plan. ## Strategy is a set of choices, not a set of goals "Grow 40%" is a goal. Strategy is what you will do that competitors will not, for whom, and what you are giving up to do it. Test any strategy with one question: **what does this say no to?** A strategy with no sacrifice is a budget with adjectives. If every option remains open, no choice has been made. The second test: could a competitor say the same sentence? If yes, it is positioning boilerplate, not strategy. ## Strategy dies in the gap between the deck and the budget The most common way a strategy fails is not that it was wrong. It is that resourcing never moved to match it — the deck says one thing and the headcount plan, the ro...