📘 How do you write a strategy memo?

What you’ll learn

1. What a Strategy Memo Is (and Is Not)Define the strategy memo as a written argument that makes one clear strategic recommendation and the reasoning behind it.A strategy memo is a short, written argument that states a strategic recommendation and the reasoning that supports it, so a reader can evaluate the thinking, not just the conclusion. It belongs to a documented tradition of narrative business writing, most famously Amazon's decision in 2004 to replace slide decks with prose memos because narrative forces clearer thought. The memo is a decision document, not a status report or a creative essay. In this course you will write one for a real or hypothetical organization, working through a case as your evidence base.
2. Structuring the Argument: Pyramid and SCQAApply the Minto Pyramid Principle and SCQA structure to order a memo so the recommendation comes first and evidence supports it.Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle holds that ideas are easiest to grasp when presented top-down: lead with the answer, then group and order the supporting arguments beneath it. Her SCQA opening (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer) gives a reliable way to set up any strategy memo so the reader arrives at your recommendation with the question already in mind. Together these tools convert a pile of analysis into a structure a busy reader can follow in one pass. You will use this scaffold to draft your own memo's opening and skeleton.
3. The Strategic Core: Diagnosis, Policy, ActionUse Rumelt's strategy kernel to ensure the memo contains a real diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent actions rather than goals dressed as strategy.Richard Rumelt argues that the heart of any good strategy is a kernel with three parts: a diagnosis of the real challenge, a guiding policy for addressing it, and a set of coherent actions that carry out the policy. Bad strategy, by contrast, substitutes fluff, fails to face the actual challenge, or mistakes goals and aspirations for a plan. A strategy memo that lacks any one of the three kernel elements is not yet a strategy, no matter how confident it sounds. This lesson gives you the test you will apply to your own memo's core.
4. Making the Choices Explicit: Where to Play, How to WinFrame the memo's recommendation as a coherent set of strategic choices using the Playing to Win choice cascade.Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley define strategy as an integrated set of choices, captured in a five-question cascade: winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities required, and management systems. The two central choices, where to play and how to win, must form a matched pair, because a market without an advantage is empty and an advantage without a market is useless. A strategy memo becomes sharper when its recommendation is expressed as these explicit, interlocking choices rather than as a vague direction. You will use the cascade to pressure-test and articulate your own recommendation.
5. Evidence, Assumptions, and RiskSupport the recommendation with verifiable evidence while stating key assumptions and addressing major risks and alternatives.A strategy memo persuades only if its claims rest on real, checkable evidence and if it is honest about what it assumes and what could go wrong. Amazon's PR/FAQ method institutionalizes this by pairing a forward-looking narrative with an FAQ that confronts the hard questions and costs head-on. Strong memos separate fact from assumption, name the major risks, and seriously consider the leading alternative rather than knocking down a straw man. This intellectual honesty is what makes a recommendation trustworthy enough to act on.
6. Building Your Strategy Memo (Applied Project)Integrate every prior tool to draft, pressure-test, and finalize a complete, evidence-based strategy memo for a chosen case.This capstone walks you through assembling the strategy memo from the components built across the course: an SCQA-driven opening, a Rumelt kernel, an explicit choice cascade, sourced evidence with stated assumptions and risks, and a clear call to action. You will draft, then run a structured self-review against the frameworks, then revise, mirroring how Amazon teams iterate a memo through many drafts before it is circulated. The deliverable is a concise memo (roughly the length of a single decision document) grounded entirely in verifiable facts about your chosen case. Completing it demonstrates you can convert strategic analysis into a persuasive, honest, decision-ready document.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle — top-down argument structure
• Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy — kernel: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action
• A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, Playing to Win — where to play / how to win choice cascade
• McKinsey & Company, “The pyramid principle” / structured communication primers
• Harvard Business School, Case memo and recommendation writing guidance

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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