Strategy testing is a time-honored practice. Well-known tests include those offered by Michael Porter and McKinsey consulting (See a compilation in the Chapter 8 supplement).
Most traditional tests, however, are not actually tests of strategy; they are tests of entire frameworks and can be of limited use when they require a lot of prediction.
The Five Disqualifiers are a new set of strategy tests. They ask,
- Is the opposite of the statement absurd?
- Does the statement include numbers?
- Is the statement a duplicate of the parent?
- Does the statement exclude anything or anyone?
- Is the statement a list?
If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then what you have is most likely not a strategy, but instead, a goal, plan, or no more than a cliché or truism that you must revise.
The Five disqualifiers are introduced in Chapter 8 of the Emergent Approach to Strategy.
Click here for an example of a Fortune 500 strategy.
For additional examples, including the following, register or log in to see the book supplement.
- New Strategies for Growing in Emerging Markets (Deloitte)
- Staircase Model
- Bill Belichick’s Super Bowl XXV Defensive Strategy
- Starve The Government of Money