Martins Three Laws
Martin's own distillation of thirty years of strategy work into three laws. Law I, Integration beats any single choice.
Law I, Integration beats any single choice. No individual answer wins; the reinforcing system of answers wins. The whole Strategy Choice Cascade exists to force this.
Law II, The Customer Is the Only Judge. Strategy is scored by Compelling Customer Action, not by internal elegance, board approval, or analyst applause. If the customer doesn't move, the strategy failed, whatever the deck said.
Law III, The opposite must not be stupid. Formalised as The Opposite Test. If no sane rival would choose the reverse of your "choice," you haven't made one, you've stated an operating imperative shared by everyone.
The laws work as a rapid audit: Is it integrated? Does it move a customer? Is it actually a choice? Most documents called strategies fail at least two, see Strategy Impostors.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
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