TL;DR

The book Playing to Win demystified and simplified the core points of corporate strategy for many people.

At its most simple, strategy comes down to "making choices, to win," according to Roger Martin and A. G. Lafley, with whom he co-wrote the book. The book's core framework in support of that idea was the "strategy cascade," which turned the core into five questions to which strategists should seek answers:

What is our winning aspiration?

Where will we play?

How will we win where we have chosen to play?

What capabilities must be in place to win?

What management systems are required to ensure the capabilities are in place? 

— A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin. Playing to Win.

In a new blog post, Roger Martin clarifies what is often the most hazy one of the five questions, i.e.,: How might one craft a "good" aspiration that's not just corporate blah-blah fluff?

Go read the article. Worth your while!

Overall:

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In his new post, Martin summarizes research where he and his partners found that the best aspirations are written in the form of "promises [to customers] over purposes [for oneself]."

Specifically, those promises should be "memorable, valuable, and deliverable/ auditable."

This is already very helpful on its own.

But on top of that, it also relates to doing Credible innovation work, by offering a new way of doing so:

Promises to customers or, as I'll call them, "solemn vows" represent a fourth "must-do purpose," where I had previously only found three.