Convictions: The real Operating System of strategy.
Vision, mission, and purpose tell the world what you wish were true. Conviction defines what you’ll actually do.
This is a deeper dive into a key area I have explored before here, in particular 'Rethinking Strategy Days' and the ‘Conviction Statement’.
If you haven’t read this already, it’s worth having a look first.
If that previous work explored how to think differently about what strategy is, this builds on why it matters and how to do it — specifically how a company qualifies it’s Conviction Statement further around how it does what it does, and what else it needs to help that drive the business.
Strategy as theory
There is a central argument in this approach that thinks about strategy as your companies theory about the answer to a particular problem or opportunity.
It’s a strong hunch, a firm prediction about a certain condition, what you are going to do to change it and why you are uniquely placed to do that thing.
It starts with the customers Job To Be Done, or the ‘Real Why’, the solution agnostic thing that people are trying to accomplish. It’s then born of interrogating the 5 Sights, that looks back for lessons: Hindsight. Looks forward to the future: Foresight. Looks inward for unique capabilities: Insight. Looks outside to what is needed to grow: Out-Sight. Looks overall to see how structure, culture and principles define how you are organised and how you consistently act: Oversight.
Because it’s a theory, it lives and dies through experiments that explore it:
You can test if it is right. You can measure the progress.
Because it’s a theory, you are always looking for ways to strengthen it, to sense where it is wrong and needs to change.
A strategy evolves, it is always in beta.
It’s the ultimate strategic frame, and it means we can then ask some basic questions of any situation we want or need to change…
What’s our theory about how we tackle this?
What is that theory based on?
(facts, opinions, expertise, experience, predictions)
Critically, it can be used to compare it to the competition, direct and indirect:
Why is it different, better than another theory?
And, can we change your theory of value faster than your competitors?
The challenges of Vision, Mission and Purpose statements.
One key question that emerges is what sits at the centre of a companies theory to make it effective in the decisions and actions it shapes?
Vision, Mission and Purpose Statements are often used to provide that glue, to create that focus, but whilst they can have their place, in particular how it is communicated, framed to the world, they can create blind spots at the structural and operational level.
They, in most cases, are not designed to capture the heart of what makes a company special in two fundamental ways:
Functionally: so that it is clear what is it about the company that makes it distinct and unique, and how those capabilities, parts, activities work together to form a greater whole (that is valuable, hard to imitate and rare), and that critically reinforces itself and its value.
And then, how that uniqueness can grow as the world grows around it (and it also shapes the world).
This is what gives the theory its actionable potency: it must clearly light the way.
Emotionally: Companies are human things. They are started and run by people. It’s people who buy what they are selling. Behind every business opportunity and challenge lies a human one, and so the second part needs to understand and work with the energy and motivation that drives human behaviour.
This is what gives the theory its emotional power: it must also light the fire.
In ‘Rethinking Strategy Days’ I introduced a simple way of framing the company theory as a ‘Conviction Statement’, it looks like this:
We are the only…(Type of business you are in)
Who helps…(Defined customer: psychographics, geography etc)
Do…(Defined Job To Be Done)
By…(Product and/or service)
Because …(The companies Operating System Special Sauce: it’s unique way of doing and being including values & principles, how it does what it does).
This gives you a centre of gravity that captures the fundamentals of the companies theory, it is therefore something people can debate and agree on: is this theory right? How different is it from our competition? And critically, is it different enough? If it isn’t, what needs to change?
What this also means you have an agreed language for what sits at the centre of the business outside the strategy day. This is important when it gets shared and discussed with employees and stakeholders, alongside the 5 sights for context.
A deeper dive into the Conviction Statement
While this is a powerful framework, work is needed to move from the Five Sights to this encapsulation. This is especially true concerning what a company means in the Conviction Statements’ ‘Because’ description (what I shall call the Functional Conviction), and, critically, how this is then captured in a simple sentence (which captures what I shall call the ‘Emotional Conviction’).
‘Because…’ Functional Conviction that Lights the way
Functional Conviction defines what makes you distinct and difficult to imitate — how your core capabilities, resources, and activities reinforce each other to create something unique and self-sustaining.
It’s therefore built from three elements:
Your key capabilities and expertise.
How those complement and strengthen one another.
How the system overall creates compounding value that others can’t easily copy.
Take Disney. Their corporate theory* might be expressed like this:
“We can sustain value-creating growth through an unrivaled capability in family-friendly animated and live-action films and then create a reinforcing system with other entertainment assets that both support and draw value from the characters and images in those films.”
That’s not a mission statement — it’s a differentiating, organising philosophy.
Michael Porter would call it a self-reinforcing activity system; Walt Disney drew it as an integrated flywheel decades before the term existed:
This activity system, creates virtuous, complimentary, interactions. Because of one, the others are better = harder to replicate.
The key thing to remember when constructing a companies ‘Because…’, Functional Conviction map:
You highlight the key capabilities, or activities, and or, the constituent companies (if you have a larger more complex more diversified organisation) and the relationship between them: which is always two way - what value they bring (to the other), and what value they gain.
Think of these as nodes that connect to other nodes, and have a flow of value to and from, and then when you step back, a reinforcing value constellation that defines the theory and the value it brings.
A note on purpose: if a company has ethical, social or environmental focus, these will be naturally captured in the functional conviction. If it is not the case, then these key elements are captured in the ‘How’, which you will have explored in the ‘Oversight’ section and the companies principles.
Emotional Conviction that Lights the fire
If the ‘Because…’ Functional Conviction lights the way, the corresponding Emotional conviction lights the fire.
It is a clear, simple point of view on the foundations of the theory.
It needs to be as ambitious as it is uniquely doable by you.
To do that it must have three qualities:
Insight-generate.
Story-launch.
Emotion-induce.
Let’s have a deeper look at what these are:
Insight-generates
Does is re-frame something for you about the situation, the challenge, the opportunity, the solution? Does it cause a re-appraisal of something you thought you knew? (the ‘Ah yes, that’s it’, or ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that’).
Story-launches
You naturally go places with it, imagine what that could mean. We all know what this feels like, it’s a very good sign.
Emotion-induce
It moves you in some way, this can be from intrigue through to ‘Hell yeah, sign me up!’. You feel something, you lean in.
In corporate strategy, not known for its emotion, this is critical. For Disney, this might be:
“We create happiness through magical experiences — speaking not just to children, but to the child in all of us.”
That sentence reframes (insight-generates), expands (story-launches), and moves (emotion-induces). It’s a rare, powerful triple.
Finding your Emotional Conviction
Emotional Convictions are much harder to find than it first appears.
To uncover them, I use the Conviction Wheel, a shortcut to structured intuition. It’s based on metaphor and analogy — because human understanding works that way. It’s designed to deliberately be a little provocative, because that is where the interesting stuff usually is.
Here’s the sequence:
Who are you fighting for?
The people you serve. What do they believe? What are their personal truths: what are they really trying to do (JTBD/the real why again)? Their cultural truths: how does culture shape both the ambition and how they think about the solution? And category truths: what is available to them — direct and indirect competition?
What are you fighting against?
The real enemy — the broken assumption, the category complacency, the thing that needs to change. It’s rarely a competitor; it’s an insightful definition of the status quo.
What are you fighting for?
The cause. What better world do you create for those you serve if you win?
What business are you really in?
Once you’ve answered the above, this often feels different; it sits between the enemy and the cause. It’s grounded in the category and company but always about more than them.
What are your weapons?
The capabilities, resources, and partnerships that make your take on the fight credible. How do they reinforce one another? Are they distinct enough to matter? What else might you need (explored in the ‘Out-sight’ work).
Who are you?
Your personality and your principles.
Personality: how you show up (what three things define you above all else?).
Principles: what you refuse to compromise (these are values in action), your red lines, your guard rails.
Between five and six sits an Integrity Filter — the line that keeps you honest. If delivering on your weapons means breaking your principles, either the weapons change or your principles do. There’s no clever workaround for integrity.
The ABC of why it matters
This Conviction Wheel process forces clarity and coherence. It should tell a compelling story — one that you, and those you are trying to serve, would recognise.
Another way of thinking about strong Emotional Convictions is from the world of life transitions. As Bruce Feiler defines in his book Life Is in the Transitions, a powerful Emotional Conviction will have:
Agency: a clear sense of the company’s role.
Cause: belief that feels important to those who matter to the company.
Belonging: a sense of connection between people — that they are not alone, that there are others like them.
The Conviction Wheel, like any good story, is iterative — answers in one part will challenge another. You’ll need to revisit, rewrite, and refine. That’s the point. Strategy and theory, like belief, are alive.
That work will also sometimes get you to rework your overall Conviction Statement, either in the substance, or the wording.
This part is as much art as it is science. It is very subjective, but you’ll, know when you find something that works.
You will now have two things:
A Convictions Statement that has a ‘Because…’ that captures what makes you operationally special, it will explain the engine of your theory. Again, this is designed to light the way.
An emotional conviction that describes the essence of the companies theory in a way that moves and intrigues people, it lights the fire.
An ask
So before you write an inspiring Vision or Purpose statement, before you get anywhere near your corresponding Mission statement, work on defining your Conviction Statement and complimentary Emotional Conviction that captures the essence of it all.
These will be much better for you and your business in the short and the long term, inside and outside the company.
*Built on Todd Zenger’s definition from his seminal 2013 paper ‘What Is the Theory of Your Firm?’.