The Strategy Role Is Evolving. Where Do You Fit? This 5-Minute Quiz Reveals Your True Role
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For decades, business leadership has been shaped by clear, established roles. A CEO leads. A CFO manages the financial engine. A COO runs the operational machine. But the chief strategy officer and the broader strategy function remain emerging and evolving parts of the organizational landscape.
Through the Outthinker Strategy Network, I have spoken with hundreds of chief strategy officers and leaders about what they actually do. What we discovered is that strategy teams take on more than 20 distinct responsibilities across organizations. Some act as futurists scanning the horizon. Others function as internal consultants driving transformation. Some lead growth, M&A, or capital allocation. Others champion innovation and guide new ideas into execution. The variety is significant, and the implications for how strategy teams create value are profound.
When we analyzed these conversations, we found that these 20-plus responsibilities naturally roll up into five core domains of strategy, which together define the full spectrum of what modern strategy teams can own.
The Five Core Domains of Strategy
- Insight and Foresight: Understanding trends, markets, competitors, and emerging possibilities.
- Strategy Development: Shaping direction, priorities, and long-term choices.
- Execution and Transformation: Turning strategy into action and leading enterprise change.
- Growth and Innovation: Creating new value through innovation, M&A, partnerships, and capital allocation.
- Alignment and Influence: Driving clarity, communication, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement.
To help strategists understand where they sit across these domains, my team and I created a short online diagnostic. It includes 21 questions representing the 21 responsibilities we uncovered in our research. When you fill it out, you will receive a clear picture of the shape of your own role and how your strategy office operates across these domains.
But this quiz is not only about your results. It is also about contributing to the next phase of strategy research.
Today, you will be able to see how your function maps across the five domains. But as more strategy leaders complete the assessment, we will be able to generate benchmarks showing:
- how your role compares to other strategists
- how your strategy office compares to peers in your industry
- how responsibilities cluster across high-performing strategy teams
If you complete the quiz now, you will be part of the group that helps build these benchmarks. And once the benchmarking data is ready, we will share it with you so you can see exactly where you stand relative to the broader strategy community.
Insights from this work will only strengthen and advance my ongoing research. It mirrors the approach we took for my most recent Harvard Business Review article, where we interviewed hundreds of employees and executives across a wide variety of sectors. That data revealed how many promising ideas die in silence inside organizations. Today’s research will give us similarly powerful insights into the evolving role of the strategy executive, and how strategy offices can unlock more value for their companies.
As we close out the year and prepare for the opportunities ahead in 2026, this is the perfect moment to reflect on your role, understand how your strategy function creates value, and help shape the next generation of benchmarking for strategy offices around the world.
I invite you to take the assessment, contribute to the research, and join a growing community helping define what strategy leadership will look like in the years to come.
To learn more about research-led strategies, visit Outthinker.com today.
Outthinker Networks is a global peer group of heads of strategy, innovation, and transformation at $1B+ companies who are determined to move their organizations to the next level. Members engage in curated learning, practical conversations, and networking opportunities to be more successful in performing their roles, solving their top challenges, and keeping their organizations ahead of the pace of disruption.
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