Many leadership teams can generate an excellent list of attractive markets. The hard part is deciding which ones will receive concentration and which ones will not, at least for now.
Where-to-play is useful only when it creates boundaries. “Enterprise customers,” “Asia,” or “digital” may still be too broad to guide investment if nobody knows which customers, needs, geographies, channels, or services actually deserve focus.
In Playing to Win, Lafley and Martin call this the where-to-play choice: deciding the arenas in which the organization will compete. The concept is strategic; the workshop challenge is helping leaders narrow attractive options and make the exclusions visible.
A real choice usually disappoints someone
A service company sees growth opportunities in three places: large corporate accounts, fast-growing SMEs, and public-sector contracts. Sales leaders want all three because the pipeline is attractive. Operations prefers corporate accounts because demand is more predictable. Finance likes a subset of SMEs because margins are better. Nobody is being irrational; each function is seeing a different part of the business.
If the facilitator asks, “Which markets are attractive?” the workshop will probably produce a list of three. Change the question. Which arena deserves concentration given the way we intend to win, the capabilities we can build, and the resources we are prepared to move? Then put actual opportunities against the proposed boundary. Would this corporate account qualify? Would this SME? Would the public-sector tender receive management attention this quarter?
The moment becomes strategic when the leadership team can say not only where it will play, but what it will deliberately leave outside the focus for now. Someone will usually feel the loss. That discomfort is not evidence that the process failed. It may be the first evidence that the choice has consequences.
Generate the arena before choosing it
Map possible arenas across the dimensions that matter to the organization: customer type, need, geography, channel, product or service, and position in the value chain. Be specific enough that two options represent meaningfully different choices.
Give people time to generate options independently. Early discussion often causes the group to settle on the most familiar arena before alternatives have been considered.
Force concentration
Use a visible board with three columns: Chosen, Not Now, and Watch. Give the leadership team a hard constraint such as limited investment tokens or a fixed number of priority arenas. The constraint is not a trick. It mirrors the reality that people, money, attention, and capability are finite. When someone argues that an attractive market should stay, ask what resource or management attention the organization is willing to shift to make that choice real.
Bring three current opportunities, customer requests, or investment proposals into the workshop. Ask where each falls under the new where-to-play choice. If every opportunity still fits, the boundary is probably not doing much work. This is where exclusion becomes practical rather than theoretical.
If leaders say “we will focus on SMEs,” ask which SMEs, with which needs, in which geography, buying through which channel, and for which services. The purpose is not to create a complicated segmentation exercise. It is to make the arena precise enough to change pursuit and resource decisions.
A useful facilitator keeps testing the language against real opportunities. If a sales lead arrives tomorrow, could the team tell whether it belongs inside the chosen field?
Ask participants to distinguish “not attractive” from “not our priority now.” Most resistance comes from hearing exclusion as permanent rejection. Strategy often needs a temporary boundary strong enough to concentrate effort while leaving the organization free to revisit it when evidence changes.
Then make the cost visible. If the team insists on adding another arena, ask which existing arena loses people, budget, or management attention. Optionality becomes more expensive when its resource consequence is explicit.
Some arenas have powerful internal sponsors because the organization has history there. Others look attractive because a recent success is easy to remember. Ask participants to bring comparable evidence for the options: customer need, economics, competitive intensity, fit with capabilities, and strategic potential. The numbers will not decide the strategy automatically, but comparable evidence makes it harder for attachment alone to dominate.
Before confirming the choice, ask each leader to complete two sentences: “We are choosing to concentrate on ______ because ______.” and “For now, we will not concentrate on ______ because ______.” Compare the reasoning, not just the labels. If leaders cannot explain the exclusion, the choice may not yet be strong enough to guide others.
Use constraints to make concentration visible
A practical way to prevent the list from expanding is to give the leadership team a fixed number of investment tokens. Each token represents scarce management attention, people, or capital. Participants allocate them across candidate arenas, explain their reasoning, and then see where the proposed strategy is actually concentrated. The numbers are not a formula for deciding strategy; they make hidden preferences and resource assumptions visible.
If the team chooses three arenas but spreads the tokens evenly across all three, ask whether that is really concentration or simply a smaller list. If one arena receives most of the resources, ask what the organization is prepared to do differently there. The exercise works because it connects the conceptual boundary to a consequence leaders recognize.
Test the choice against Monday
The leadership team can name both the chosen arenas and the not-now arenas. Sales pursuits, investment discussions, and management attention begin to change because of the boundary. Once the arena is clearer, the next challenge is how the organization intends to win there.
Test one real opportunity against your proposed boundary. For the strategy concept itself, see Choose Where You Will Play. Then continue to Help Leaders Decide How They Intend to Win.