Strategy Pentathlon^TM

Five performance arenas constitute the venues, wherein the purposeful commitment of resources to action may yield extraordinary results.

Vision21’s Universal Strategic Framework™ (USF™) asserts that five generic  Critical Success Factors (CSFs)—Platform, Excellence, Talent, Knowledge, and Innovation—constitute individually necessary conditions for, and collectively sufficient cause of, Goal attainment in any (every) business, regardless of its size, scope, maturity, or industry.

Together, those five generic CSFs establish USF’s Strategy Pentathlon—the five business performance arenas, wherein purposeful commitments of resources to action may yield extraordinary results. That keen strategic insight simplifies life for business leaders and strategists, by highlighting “what matters most” and thereby sharply focusing organizational attention, deliberation, decision making, priority setting, resource allocation and timely execution on clear paths forward to top performance.

The notion of Critical Success Factors dates back to 1961 and saw much of its advancement in the field of Management Information Systems (MIS)—addressing questions about what executives should (must) monitor and attend to as their top priorities.  In the 1990s, the evolving Theory of Constraints‒Thinking Processes led to the conception of the Intermediate Objectives Map—essentially a TOC-TP Prerequisite Tree (PRT), without the Obstacles.

See Gen AI-assisted search descriptive result, below:

Note: “The Logical Thinking Process” refers to the title/content of a book by H. William (“Bill”) Dettmer, which many TOC-TP practitioners regard as the “Bible”.  Dettmer was instrumental in advancing the notion and value of CSFs.  He also gave the IO Map its now popular “Goal Tree” name.

USF takes Critical Success Factors to the next level, by tailoring them into Decisive Performance Advantages (DPAs), using Meta-discipline bodies of knowledge that serve as “how to” toolkits and users’ manuals for securing each CSF in sufficient measure to underwrite Goal attainment.