McKinsey's Ten Timeless Tests of Strategy
The Ten Timeless Tests of Strategy is McKinsey's checklist of ten specific questions - does it beat the market, tap a true advantage, get granular on where to compete, sit ahead of the trends, rest on privileged insight, embrace uncertainty, balance commitment with flexibility, survive an unbiased review, inspire real conviction, and land in an actual resourced plan - for pressure-testing a strategy before you commit to it.
Ten cards sit in a grid, each holding one question you'd need to answer before committing.
Reach for this when…
- A strategy document reads well but nobody's stress-tested it against anything specific.
- You're about to commit budget to a plan and want to know exactly what could sink it.
- Two strategies both sound plausible and you need ten sharper questions than 'does it sound good'.
How to run it
- Test 1 - will it beat the market? Check it's built to generate real economic profit, not just track it.
- Test 2 - does it tap a true source of advantage? Name the incumbency or capability a rival can't easily copy.
- Test 3 - is it granular about where to compete? Get specific on the segments, not the whole market.
- Test 4 - does it put you ahead of the trends? Check it's timed to catch a shift early, not late.
- Test 5 - does it rest on privileged insight? Name what you know that isn't public information.
- Test 6 - does it embrace uncertainty? Check it names the uncertainties and preps for more than one future.
- Test 7 - does it balance commitment and flexibility? Split it into big bets, no-regret moves and real options.
- Test 8 - is it contaminated by bias? Check overconfidence, anchoring or the loudest voice in the room haven't quietly shaped the choice.
- Test 9 - does it inspire genuine conviction to act? Check the leadership team actually believes it, not just signs it.
- Test 10 - is it translated into clear actions and resource allocation? Check the budget and the calendar actually moved.
A worked example
Situation. Ingrid Haugen runs Nordlys Energi, a battery-technology startup in Bergen, Norway, with a strategy deck full of ambition and short on scrutiny.
Applied. Running the plan through the ten tests, it held up on market logic and advantage, but failed Test 10 hard: the plan's resourcing assumed hiring forty engineers in a market where they'd struggled to hire four, so the actions never matched the ambition.
Result. She rewrote the growth timeline around realistic hiring capacity instead of the ambition, and added a partnership route to cover the gap the internal team couldn't fill.
The catch
The tests catch weak logic, not bad luck - a strategy can pass all ten and still fail because the market moves somewhere nobody predicted. Running all ten properly takes real time and candour, and teams under pressure to look ready tend to skip the ones most likely to embarrass them, conviction and resource allocation are usually the first to get waved through. The value is entirely in how honestly you answer, not in ticking the box.
The test most often waved through is resource allocation, because admitting the plan isn't funded is the one most likely to stall it.
Origin: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt & Sven Smit (McKinsey)