The Opposite Test: the fastest strategy diagnostic.

This is Martin's fastest diagnostic, Law III of Martin's Three Laws, and it takes thirty seconds. If the opposite of your strategic statement is obviously insane, "ignore our customers", "ship unreliable products", then the original was not a strategic choice. It is an operating imperative: something everyone in the industry does, that confers no advantage on anyone. If a thoughtful, well-resourced rival could defensibly choose the opposite, you have made a real choice.

Worked examples

"We will invest in innovation" fails: no board in the world is voting to divest from innovation. "We will compete only in categories where we can reach number one or two" passes: a sensible rival could choose breadth over position, many do, and the difference between the two postures shapes everything downstream. The historic pass is Kennedy's moonshot: the USSR had not committed to a crewed lunar landing, so the aspiration was a genuine choice with a genuine opposite.

Where the test cuts hardest

Faked choices cluster in the How to Win box, where lists of sensible improvements masquerade as theories of advantage, so run the test there first. It is also the quickest way to expose Playing to Play, the participation posture dressed as strategy, and most of the specimens in Strategy Impostors fail it on contact. Its companions in the toolkit: the Can't-Won't Test for whether an advantage is protected, and What Would Have to Be True for working through disagreement.

How this connects to OKRs

Run the test on every draft Objective. An Objective whose opposite is absurd, "improve customer satisfaction", is not a bet, it is business-as-usual in costume, and it belongs on a scorecard with a threshold rather than in the quarter's OKRs. The test also polices focus: when twelve "wildly important" goals all pass as imperatives and none as choices, the portfolio is a to-do list wearing strategy's clothes.