Where to Play, How to Win (Riley)

This is Riley's one-page strategy for the client's partner ecosystem, set out as five cascading choices that lead from ambition down to the systems that make it run.

What it is

A REPORT deliverable in the Board Pack (Partnership Playbook), the first page in Riley's set. It follows the Roger Martin strategy cascade: five linked questions where each answer constrains the next. Riley drafts every question with the LLM, building on Alex's published Opportunity Map and Sam's Workshop Pack, and each answer is consultant-editable. The strapline on the page reads "{client}'s partnership strategy on one page."

What each section means

The page presents five questions in order. Each answer should follow from the one above it, so read them top to bottom.

1. What is our winning aspiration? The outcome the partner strategy exists to

achieve. This is the ambition everything else serves, so keep it about the goal, not the tactics.

1. Where will we play? The categories, segments and regions the client will

compete in through partners. This should reconcile with Alex's priority categories, not contradict them.

1. How will we win in chosen markets? The way the client wins in those chosen

spaces: the differentiation and the partner motion that make it work.

1. What capabilities must we have? The capabilities the client needs in place

to win the way it just said it would. These should trace to the readiness and maturity gaps surfaced in Sam's pack.

1. What management systems do we need? The systems, cadences and measurement

that keep the strategy running once it starts.

Because the questions cascade, an answer that does not follow from the one above it is the tell that the strategy has a break in it.

Reviewing it before publishing

• The cascade holds. Each answer follows from the one above. Where you play

fits the aspiration; how you win fits where you play; capabilities support how you win.

• It reconciles with the upstream packs. Where to play matches Alex's priority

categories; the capabilities match the gaps Sam surfaced. The Board Pack should not argue with the maps it is built on.

• Every question is answered. No placeholder or blank question. Each reads as a

real choice, not a restatement of the question.

• The client's voice is right. The LLM draft is a starting point. Edit each

answer so it sounds like the client's strategy and uses their language, then publish.