The point of view strategy formula

The point of view strategy formula: how one sentence turns insight into action and outcome

Every quarter, in almost every company I have worked with across LATAM, someone presents a deck full of observations.

• “Customers are using mobile devices more.”
• “Competitors are cutting prices.”
• “The market is moving to the cloud.”

The slides are clean, the data is real, and nothing happens. Observations describe the world. They do not change it.

The difference between a team that reacts to the market and a team that shapes it is not more data. It is a point of view.

In twenty years moving between product design, solution architecture, and business development — sitting on both sides of the table in multi-million dollar RFP processes for banks, retailers, and telecoms — I have seen the same failure mode repeat: smart people with strong opinions that never become strategy, because those opinions never get compressed into a form the organization can execute.

The simplest executable form I know is a one-sentence formula:

This {key insight} means we should do {action} and it will create {outcome}.

Three slots: insight, action, outcome.

If you cannot fill all three with honesty and precision, you do not have a point of view strategy yet; you have a mood. Here is how to fill each slot, how to pressure-test the full sentence, and why this discipline stays useful no matter how the market changes.

Insight: dig beneath the surface

An observation tells you what is happening.

An insight tells you why it is happening, and the “why” is always a human behaviour or an unmet need. The test question is simple: what underlying behaviour or unmet need does this pattern reveal?

Take the classic mobile example.

The observation is “more customers are using mobile devices.” True and useless. The insight is “mobile users are seeking instant, convenience-driven experiences.” Same data, different depth. The first sentence describes a screen size; the second describes a human expectation, and expectations are something you can design for.

Same confusion in enterprise sales, where the stakes are higher, and the fog is thicker.

When a bank in the region issues an RFP, the shallow read is “the client wants the lowest price.” Teams respond by cutting margin.

The deeper insight is usually different: the evaluation committee is personally accountable for the decision. Nobody ever got fired for choosing the vendor with the best compliance story, the clearest data sovereignty guarantees, and the most stringent SLA penalties.

The unmet need is not price; it is the reduction of personal and institutional risk. Price is just the language risk speaks when nobody has addressed risk directly.

Once you see that, your whole response changes.

You stop defending a discount and start designing certainty: local infrastructure, audit trails, penalty clauses you can actually sign, references from equivalent institutions. That is what digging beneath the surface buys you.

Habits that help teams reach insight instead of stopping at observation:

• Ask “why now?” Every trend exists for a reason. The reason is the insight.
• Look for what the user or buyer would never say out loud. Needs show up in behaviour, workarounds, and fears, not in survey answers.
• Rewrite the observation so it includes a verb about a human: seeking, avoiding, fearing, or trusting. Channels are nouns; needs are verbs.

Action: pick the strategic lever to address it

An insight without an action is trivia.

The second slot forces a choice: what exactly should the business do in response to this insight?

Pay attention to the word “should.” A real action is a lever, and a lever implies trade-off. If your action costs nothing and rules nothing out, it is not strategy; it is hygiene.

Back to mobile example

The shallow response to “mobile users want instant, convenient experiences” is “create a mobile-friendly website.” That is responsive design, not strategy; any competitor can ship it by Friday.

The deeper response is “create an easy purchase experience designed for mobile, such as personalised offers.” That is a different business decision. It touches merchandising, data, checkout, and content. It is harder, and precisely because it is harder, it creates advantage.

In deal work, the shallow action to a price-focused RFP is a discount

The deeper action, built on the risk insight, is to restructure the commercial model: a short proof of value that removes performance risk, outcome-based milestones that align incentives, a delivery and support wrapper that makes the client’s internal champion look prudent rather than adventurous. You are no longer selling the same thing at a worse margin. You are selling a different thing.

A simple test for the action slot

If a competitor could copy your action without believing your insight, the action is too shallow. “Mobile-friendly website” copies for free. “A mobile-first purchase journey with personalised offers on first-party data” cannot be copied without the belief, the data, and the organisational will behind it. Depth is what makes an action defensible.

Outcome: illustrate the value of the result

The third slot is where most strategies die quietly.

Teams write outcomes like “increased mobile sales” or “improved satisfaction.” Those are directions, not outcomes. A real outcome names the mechanism of value, then attaches a number.

In the mobile case example

“improved mobile experience creates higher lifetime value.” Now you have a claim about how value is created — experience drives retention and wallet share, not just one more transaction. Then you quantify: 2x LTV. The number does not need to be perfect on day one. It needs to exist, because a number is a promise you can be held to, and being held to is what makes teams serious.

In enterprise deals

I phrase the outcome as the shape of the contract, not the signature. Not “win the RFP,” but “a three-year contract with penalties capped, a renewal clause that compounds, and an expansion path into two additional business units, worth a defined amount over the term.” That sentence tells finance what to model, legal what to protect, and delivery what to honour. “Win the deal” tells nobody anything.

The outcome slot has two jobs

• First, it explains the payoff when insight and action come together — the causal story.
• Second, it quantifies the payoff so the organization can decide whether the lever is worth pulling.

Strategy is the allocation of scarce resources, and allocation requires a number.

Three mistakes that keep teams shallow

• First, mistaking a trend for an insight. “Everyone is talking about AI” is a trend. The insight is what people actually do differently because of it: for example, buyers now expect a working proof in weeks, not a promise in months. Trends date your document; insights explain it.
• Second, choosing an action with no trade-off. If the action does not force you to say no to something else, it will not create an advantage. It will only create meetings.
• Third, stopping at a qualitative outcome. “Better experience” cannot be funded. “2x LTV,” “30% faster resolution,” “20% quicker time to market” can be funded, staffed, and reviewed. If you would not bet a bonus on the number, keep refining it until you would.

Putting the formula to work

Here is how I would run it in a room — product squad, deal war-room, or leadership offsite.

• Step one: write the sentence before the slides. Force the debate onto one line. If the sentence collapses under questioning, forty slides will not save it.
• Step two: pressure-test each slot separately. Insight: does it provoke a reaction, either recognition or sharp disagreement? An insight nobody feels is an observation in costume. Action: does it have an owner, a cost, and a trade-off? If it is free, it is not a choice. Outcome: is there a number and a horizon? “Higher LTV” is a wish; “2x LTV in eighteen months” is a commitment.
• Step three: treat the sentence as a hypothesis, not a tattoo. A point of view is held strongly and tested continuously. Put it on a calendar, and every quarter ask: is the insight still true, is the action still ours, is the outcome still material? When the world changes, rewrite the sentence. The discipline is the asset, not the specific words.

And do not limit the formula to corporate strategy; it scales down beautifully

• A designer might write: “users abandon checkout because they fear hidden fees, so we should show the full cost on the first screen, and it will create a measurable lift in completion.”
• A business developer might write: “regional clients distrust vendors with no local presence, so we should build a local delivery pod with local certifications, and it will create shorter sales cycles in regulated industries.”
• A professional managing a career might write: “the market rewards people who connect design and commerce, so I should take roles between product and sales, and it will create optionality that pure specialists do not have.” I know that last one works. I lived it.

Why this formula does not expire

Tools change. Channels change. The hot framework of the quarter replaces the one before it. What does not change is the discipline of thinking clearly under pressure

Turning a pattern into a human truth, a human truth into a choice with a trade-off, and a choice into value you can measure.

That is why this formula is worth keeping in your pocket whether you read it today or in five years. It does not depend on a platform, a geography, or an economy. It depends on you.

Final thought

The next time you walk into a room where a decision has to be made, resist the urge to bring more data. Bring one sentence.

This {key insight} means we should do {action} and it will create {outcome}.

Say it out loud. Let the room attack it. What survives that attack is the only thing in the deck that was ever going to matter: your point of view.