Strategic centering is necessary, and it is not sufficient

2 November 2026

“The Power of Strategic Centering,” (opens in a new tab) Rita McGrath’s article in the July issue of Harvard Business Review, contends that the strategy frameworks built for an economy of physical assets have become “dangerously incomplete,” and asks leadership teams to organize the company around one Strategic Center. Roger Martin replied (opens in a new tab) that her premise fails an audit of logic and data, and that each center is one choice in the strategy cascade. Each describes part of strategy. Neither tells a leadership team where to concentrate its time, attention and capital.

A Strategic Center tells a company what it is about#

McGrath asks leadership teams to choose one organizing principle that guides resource allocation, opportunity selection and organizational identity. She offers five kinds: a mission, a customer, a technology, a regional or national ecosystem, and the erasure of friction. She is careful to separate a center from purpose and from vision, which she describes as a static destination. A center gives direction. It bounds the set of opportunities a company will pursue, and it lets people act without waiting for permission, because they share an understanding of what the company is about. Henry Mintzberg called this structure an umbrella strategy: leadership sets the boundaries, and the content of the strategy emerges inside them. A Strategic Center draws that umbrella.

The strategy cascade asks for a set of choices made to fit one another#

An audit of logic and data opens Roger Martin’s reply. He finds no reasoning that links the shift to intangible assets to the obsolescence of earlier frameworks, and he presents evidence that competitive advantage still lasts. That evidence comes from today’s largest firms, a sample that selects the firms whose advantages lasted. The frameworks she sets aside were designed to diagnose an industry or an organization, and turning that diagnosis into a strategy was always the leadership team’s work. He then places each of McGrath’s five centers within the strategy cascade he developed with A. G. Lafley: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, the capabilities required and the management systems that build them. A strategy needs all five, designed to support one another. His mapping treats a center as a single choice, while McGrath describes an organizing principle meant to guide every choice.

Competitive position shifts while the center stays fixed#

A Strategic Center can stay the same for decades. Competitive position shifts every time a rival or a technology does. A leadership team that has chosen its center still has to see which of its capabilities set it apart in the market, and which are turning into commodities anyone can buy. That picture decides what the company should build, what it should partner on and what it should buy.

Neither piece names the constraint#

Inside a center’s bounds there are usually more opportunities than an organization can finish.

A Strategic Center says what the company is about and which opportunities belong to it. A strategy cascade states what winning means and designs the choices that pursue it. Neither identifies the constraint that most restricts progress toward winning, or the crux where concentrated effort promises the greatest achievable progress.

McGrath expects resources to follow the center once it is clear. Inside a center’s bounds there are usually more opportunities than an organization can finish. In a survey of nearly eight thousand managers, only 11 percent said all of their company’s strategic priorities had the resources they needed.

Half of middle managers in the same survey believed they could fund opportunities outside the strategic objectives, a portfolio drawn wider than the system can support. The survey found alignment largely solved and coordination unsolved: 84 percent of managers said they could rely on their boss and their direct reports, and only 9 percent could rely on colleagues in other functions and units all the time. Cross-unit conflicts were handled badly two times out of three. A system’s performance is usually governed by one limiting factor, and improving anything else may create local efficiency and leave the organization’s strategic outcomes unchanged.

The crux concentrates effort, and it changes#

The center is meant to last. The crux changes as it is resolved, as capabilities grow and as competitors respond.

Richard Rumelt calls the crux the part of a challenge where consequence and addressability meet. It is a provisional judgment: given what the team knows and the capabilities it has now, this challenge deserves concentration. The center is meant to last. The crux changes as it is resolved, as capabilities grow and as competitors respond.

Four questions, in order#

1. What is the company about, and which opportunities belong to it?
2. What does winning mean, and which choices pursue it?
3. Which of our capabilities still set us apart, and which are turning into commodities?
4. What most restricts our progress toward winning, and where would concentrated effort produce the greatest achievable progress?

Each answer depends on the one before it. The first two should last. The last two have to be revisited as the market changes and each constraint is resolved, and revising them on purpose while keeping the first two steady is what makes a strategy adaptive.

Martin asks leadership teams to write down what would have to be true for their choices to succeed, so the recorded logic can be checked against events. The same discipline applies to the constraint and the crux. Adaptation is a property of committed strategies operating under feedback, and it never substitutes for commitment.