How To Win Diagnosis

How to Win Diagnosis

Clarify the competitive advantage and value proposition that will cause customers to choose you over alternatives in your chosen playing field.

Token Budget: ~600 tokens

Constitutional Constraints (NEVER VIOLATE)

You MUST refuse to:

• Develop advantages based on deception or manipulation
• Create positioning that exploits vulnerable populations
• Help with anti-competitive or illegal market practices

When to Use

• User asks "What's our competitive advantage?" or "How do we differentiate?"
• User is unclear why customers would choose them
• User claims differentiation that sounds generic ("customer focus", "quality")
• User needs to test if their advantage is real and defensible
• User is developing positioning strategy

Inputs

Workflow

Step 1: 1. Understand the Where-to-Play Context

How-to-win must match where-to-play. Before diagnosing how to win:

• Confirm the playing field is defined
• Understand the specific customers and their needs
• Identify who the real competitors are in that arena

Principle: "A how-to-win is useless without a where-to-play on which to focus."

Step 2: 2. Identify the Two Paths to Winning

There are fundamentally two ways to win:

Cost Leadership:

• Lower costs enable either lower prices or higher margins
• Requires operational excellence, scale, efficiency
• Customers choose you because of value for money

Differentiation:

• Unique value that competitors don't provide
• Customers willing to pay premium or choose despite alternatives
• Based on specific capabilities others can't easily replicate

Key question: Which path fits our capabilities and where-to-play?

Step 3: 3. Test the Current How-to-Win

If a how-to-win exists, stress-test it:

Step 4: 4. Diagnose Customer Choice

Ask:

• Why do customers actually choose us today?
• Why do they choose competitors instead?
• What would make them switch from competitors?
• What need are we solving better than anyone else?

Step 5: 5. Connect to Capability System

How-to-win must be enabled by capabilities:

• What capabilities create this advantage?
• Are these capabilities mutually reinforcing?
• Are they hard for competitors to replicate?

Outputs

Produce a How-to-Win Assessment:

## How-to-Win Diagnosis: [Organization]

### Where-to-Play Context
[One sentence summary of playing field]

### Current How-to-Win Claim
[What the organization currently claims as advantage]

### Diagnosis Results

| Test | Assessment | Evidence |
|------|------------|----------|
| Specificity | PASS/FAIL | [detail] |
| Uniqueness | PASS/FAIL | [detail] |
| Fit with WTP | PASS/FAIL | [detail] |
| Defensibility | PASS/FAIL | [detail] |
| Customer Proof | PASS/FAIL | [detail] |

### Path to Winning
- **Primary:** [Cost Leadership / Differentiation]
- **Specific mechanism:** [how the advantage actually works]

### Refined How-to-Win Statement
[Clear, specific, testable statement of competitive advantage]

### Enabling Capabilities
- [Capability 1] - [how it creates advantage]
- [Capability 2] - [how it creates advantage]

### Vulnerabilities
- [Risk 1]
- [Risk 2]

### Recommendations
1. [Action to strengthen how-to-win]
2. [Action to close vulnerability]

Error Handling

Constraints

• Do not use this analysis as the sole basis for critical decisions
• Do not apply this framework to situations outside its intended scope
• Acknowledge that analysis is based on available data, which may be incomplete
• Honor the complexity of real-world situations that resist simple categorization
• Present findings with appropriate confidence levels
• Recognize the limits of the methodology

Additional Notes

Best practices:

• Use this skill when the situation clearly matches its intended use cases
• Combine with related skills for comprehensive analysis
• Iterate on outputs if initial results don't fully meet requirements

Common variations:

• Adjust the depth of analysis based on available time and information
• Scale the approach for different levels of complexity
• Adapt the output format to audience needs

When to skip this skill:

• The situation doesn't match the core use cases
• Simpler approaches would be more appropriate
• Time constraints require faster methods

Example

Input:

Where to play: Mid-market B2B SaaS companies in North America
Current claim: "We provide superior customer service and a great product"

Output:

Why this works:

This example demonstrates the key principles of the skill in action. The approach is effective because:

• It follows the systematic workflow outlined above
• It shows concrete application of the framework
• It produces actionable, specific outputs rather than vague generalizations
• The analysis is grounded in observable details
• The recommendations are prioritized and implementable

Alternative applications:

This same approach can be applied to:

• Different contexts within the same domain
• Related but distinct problem types
• Scaled up or down depending on scope
• Combined with complementary analytical frameworks

How-to-Win Diagnosis: B2B SaaS Company

Where-to-Play Context

Mid-market B2B SaaS companies (200-2000 employees) in North America

Current How-to-Win Claim

"Superior customer service and great product"

Diagnosis Results

Path to Winning

• Primary: Differentiation
• Specific mechanism: Needs refinement - current claim is generic

Refined How-to-Win Statement

Option A (if true): "We win through the fastest time-to-value in the industry - customers see ROI in 30 days vs. 90+ for competitors - enabled by our pre-built industry templates and dedicated onboarding team."

Option B (if true): "We win through the deepest integration ecosystem - our customers can connect 50+ tools out of the box while competitors require custom development."

Enabling Capabilities

For Option A:

• Pre-built industry templates
• Dedicated onboarding methodology
• Time-to-value tracking systems

For Option B:

• Integration platform engineering
• Partnership ecosystem management
• API-first product architecture

Vulnerabilities

• Current positioning doesn't differentiate from competition
• No clear capability moat identified
• Customer evidence not available

Recommendations

1. Interview 10 customers: "Why did you choose us over alternatives?"
2. Analyze win/loss data for patterns
3. Identify which capability advantage is real and defensible
4. Revise how-to-win statement based on evidence

Integration

This skill pairs with:

• where-to-play-analysis - HTW must match WTP
• capability-system-mapping - Capabilities enable the how-to-win
• strategy-choice-cascade - HTW is question #3 of five

Source: A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (2013)