The story in my family goes like this:

When I was about 5 years old, I approached my parents one day and asked them who decides on the prices in stores. They told me that it depends – some prices are regulated, but generally, the store owner decides. I asked how they decide, and my parents explained the notion of price sensitivity (not in so many words) – that generally if you price something higher fewer people would buy it, and if you price it lower more people would. 

I went to play, grappling with that idea, and then it hit me. I returned to my parents and yelled “But it’s actually the same!”. They had no idea what I was talking about, so I explained: “If I price my products high and fewer people will buy them, it is the same as if I price my products low and more people will buy them!”. I meant money-wise, I didn’t know back then that there is more to it (but I was five, so I think it’s forgivable). 

My proud parents then asked me the interesting question: “If you really did have a store, what would you choose?”, I thought for a minute and then said, “I would price them high because then I’ll have to deal with fewer people.”

My parents, in a casual afternoon conversation, taught me math, economics, and business. 

In math, they caused me to discover how multiplication works. 

In economics, they explained to me the foundations of a perfect market.

And in business, they taught me the power of strategic choices as well as the mere fact that I can choose.

This last one is a powerful distinction because if you have a choice you have power. You are not bound by circumstances and can create your own reality.

While it’s true generally as an approach to life (in psychology it’s called an internal locus of control), today I want to talk about its implication when you create your strategy.

Strategy Is a Choice

It is very tempting to approach strategy as if there is a right answer that we only need to find. That’s the beauty of math, for example. There is a single right answer. Everything else is wrong. If you find the right answer, you score. But strategy isn’t as simple.

In strategy, there is no right answer. 

The definition of strategy is a high-level plan toward your goals under conditions of uncertainty. This uncertainty part means that no one knows the right answer, even if there is one. In the tech world, there are often many right answers.

Take Apple’s Vision Pro for example. It uses the power of AR, and specifically screens displayed in the space, primarily for entertainment. It’s a legitimate strategy, that resonates well with Apple’s iPhone strategy. 

But this technology doesn’t have to be used for entertainment. An Israeli startup, Sightful, uses a similar concept of screens displayed in space for another use case – productivity. It’s a full-blown laptop, where instead of a screen you have AR glasses that let you work wherever you are with multiple screens. I tried a very early version of it and it’s super cool. For someone like me who has 4 Chrome profiles, each open with multiple windows and each window with multiple tabs, having the ability to spread them in the space in front of me makes perfect sense.

It’s also a legitimate strategy, and had Apple seen Vision Pro more related to Mac than to iPhone it could have gone down that path too. 

So how do you choose? Here is a framework that will help you understand your choices and regain the freedom to choose, time and again.

Note: The examples that I will give here are related to product strategy but the same principles can be applied to many other areas – either strategic or simply tough or complex decisions that you need to make where there is no perfect answer (for example, decisions on team structure, hiring, priorities, go/no-go, or anything else).

List All Your Constraints

The constraints we live in limit our options. That’s not a bad thing. But when we want to understand our choices or make complex decisions, we must first define the constraints that bind us. We want to make them explicit and not leave them as vague ideas in our heads, since only then we can challenge them or even explain them to others.

The problem is that many of the constraints that bind our actions are not even vague ideas, we simply live with them and never question them. Like fish who don’t understand the concept of water.

When you think about your product strategy or a specific decision at hand, create a list of constraints that you live by. You can start with obvious things like the country you live in or the domain that your company operates in. Write down as many constraints as possible. These constraints can be anything that you take as given, even things like “the CEO will not approve an additional headcount” or “this can’t be done in less than 2 years”.

You might notice that you feel uncomfortable writing down some of those constraints, mostly because you are no longer sure they should limit you. That’s what this exercise is about. Write them down anyway since you’ll need them down the road.

Next, we are going to review each and every constraint you listed and challenge it. To do so we will split them into two types of constraints: objective constraints and choices.

Constraints That You Choose to Have

These are great constraints. We must make them or otherwise, we won’t be able to decide on anything. Technology is such a powerful tool, that you have to limit your options to move forward.

The example I gave above about Apple vs. Sightful is such a constraint about the mission statement and the product purpose (entertainment vs. productivity). You can have similar constraints in any area, including market segment, financial models, go-to-market strategy, team structure, and anything else. 

For example, Monday.com’s founders decided early on that they didn’t want salespeople in the company. They didn’t have to decide that, but that’s what they wanted. It was a personal preference that they stuck with until it was no longer the right choice for the company.

And that’s exactly what you need to do with these constraints: First, understand that it’s perfectly fine to choose a constraint even if you don’t have to. Once you do, talk about it clearly and proudly. Then, occasionally, challenge yourself to see if you still choose this constraint wholeheartedly. 

If you do, go back to step two (talk about it, etc.). If you don’t, that’s the beauty of these constraints: it was your choice all along, so you can now choose differently.

Of course, when you’re not the CEO, your power to simply choose differently is limited. But even as the CEO, you need to make a responsible choice, you can’t just zig-zag because you can. The important part here is to realize that what you chose back then might no longer be the right choice for the company, and then you can start thinking about how to change that. Some changes take longer than others, and most require teamwork to be done right, but the power to make it happen is in your hands.

Objective Constraints, AKA Facts

What about constraints that are not a matter of choice, but rather a matter of reality?

First, make sure you don’t tag them as such too quickly. Some things might look like an objective reality, but there is also a choice there in the deeper layer. For example, things like “our team size is X”. You might see it as given, maybe the company just had layoffs and you are pretty sure no one will give you additional people any time soon. That’s great, but it means that someone chose to leave that amount of people and no more, even at the price of doing less. It might have been you. It might have been the right choice at the time, but it’s not a force of nature. Perhaps if you had an extremely compelling business case, additional headcount would suddenly become a viable option.

Then, look at the things that you see as forces of nature. For example, we don’t know how to reduce the cost of our hardware further without hurting our quality. We have tried everything and simply couldn’t get good enough results. You might want to re-validate that this is truly the case, as sometimes people have new ideas for old problems. That’s where disruption comes from. 

And if they really are true? Objective barriers that you can’t bypass? That’s also great. Because now you know that the answer you are looking for is somewhere else.