The 5 Big Bets Every Leadership Team Needs to Make to Drive Strategic Growth

Playing it safe rarely leads to growth. You grow by identifying where your organization needs to move, committing to a direction before you have every answer, and executing with clarity even when the outcome isn't guaranteed.

That's the core idea behind Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets — the premise that business isn't chess, where all the pieces are visible and every move is calculable.

Business is poker: you're always operating with incomplete information, imperfect conditions, and real stakes. The leaders who win aren't the ones who wait for certainty. They're the ones who get better at making smart decisions inside uncertainty.

After working with leadership teams across hundreds of organizations across industries, sizes, and growth stages, we've found one thing to be consistent: every strategic bet that moves a company forward fits into one of these five categories.

The 5 Big Bets for Strategic Growth

Which bet has your company been avoiding? And what is it costing you to wait? 

1. People

This is almost always where the biggest leverage lives — and where leaders wait the longest to act.

Hiding behind loyalty is expensive. Most leadership teams have at least one person they know, deep down, they're not holding accountable — because of history, comfort, or a fear of conflict.

The Big People Bet is making the move you've been avoiding. Decouple ego and personal bias from the decision. Name the roles your strategy actually requires — and be honest about whether the right people are in them.

The question worth asking: Do you have the right people, leadership, roles, structure, and capabilities to get where you want to go...and what needs to change if you don’t?

2. Process

A lot of companies are running an $80M hamster wheel — lots of motion, not enough margin.

The symptom looks like a revenue problem. The diagnosis is usually a process problem. Vanity metrics that look good in a deck but don't tie to net profit. Incentive structures for frontline teams that don't ladder up to what leadership is actually tracking. Waste nobody wants to name out loud.

The Big Process Bet is ruthless alignment — making sure what your people are compensated on is the same thing your leadership team cares about. Motion and margin are not the same thing.

The question worth asking: What needs to become simpler, stronger, more consistent, or more scalable for your business to perform at the next level?

3. Technology & Tools

Most leadership teams are playing defense on technology. Waiting to see what happens with AI. Running the same tools they've had for five years. Hoping their industry moves slowly enough that they don't have to decide.

The Big Tech Bet isn't about chasing every shiny tool. It's about asking an uncomfortable question honestly: on a scale of 1-5, how much of a threat is AI to the way your company currently makes money right now? And what is an aggressive startup doing at this moment to render your business model obsolete?

Disrupt yourself before the market does it for you.

The question worth asking: What technology, tools, equipment, or infrastructure will you need to invest in, change, eliminate, or rethink to build the business you’re becoming?

4. Products & Services

Here's something Dan Kennedy said that I think about a lot: your employees don't give a sh*t about your revenue. And neither do your customers. They care about what your product or service does for them.

Most companies are carrying too much. Too many of us have a product that consumes 30% of our energy for 5% of our profit, or a poor-fit customer type you keep saying yes to out of habit.

The Big Product Bet has two parts. First, the courage to subtract — to prune the distraction that's stealing resources from your core. Second, doubling down on the thing you do better than anyone else and anchoring it clearly to your purpose.

The question worth asking: What should you add, eliminate, improve, or double down on to create more value for your customers and your business?

5. Markets & Locations

This is where leadership teams make the most expensive mistakes — and where small bets today can protect big dreams tomorrow.

Expansion without operational foundation is just chaos at scale. We worked with one leadership team that had grown revenue 4X. Profit had moved from break-even to 14% when they switched from chaos to something that finally felt manageable.

That didn't happen because they chased every market opportunity. It happened because they built their operational foundation first, placed low-cost information bets to test new markets before committing, and let the data buy them optionality — instead of gambling on a hunch.

The question worth asking: Where should you grow, expand, enter, exit, or choose not to play...and what do you need to know before you make that bet?

Every one of these bets requires the same thing: a leadership team that's aligned, accountable, and willing to make hard decisions before the window closes.

That's easier said than done. Most leadership teams know which bet they need to make within thirty seconds of reading this. The harder question is why they haven't made it yet — and the answer usually isn't about courage. It's about clarity, alignment, and the absence of someone in the room willing to pressure-test the thinking and hold the team accountable to what comes next.

That's the work Get Strategy, Done® was built for.

If your leadership team is ready to identify the bets that will actually move your business forward — and build the execution plan to back them up — we'd love to be in that room with you.