At the end of the day, Strategy boils down to tradeoff decisions.
To be successful, your organization needs to make tradeoff decisions that are aligned from the highest level of Mission and Vision, down to the decisions made every day by the team members.
Iceberg analogy for tradeoff decisions.
While the tradeoff decisions made every day by the teams are generally small, the cumulative impact of misaligned tradeoffs can have a dramatic impact on your ability to achieve your mission and vision.
Your Mission and Vision are the highest level tradeoff decisions and set the widest boundaries for other tradeoffs.
You likely identify desired outcomes on a 1, 3, and 5-year timeframe that move you closer to achieving your Mission and Vision.
Next you choose Opportunities (valuable problems to solve) to pursue that will achieve your desired outcomes.
Finally, you fund Initiatives to purse the Opportunities.