Tim took this photograph from a café table in Paris. One picture, public data, and MOVE. Four minutes later: a corporate strategy for the brand, and a strategy for the store across the street.
How strategy is set and run is changing.
Analysis now takes hours. Deciding is still the job.
More options tested before committing. Gaps reviewed monthly, down to the lowest P&L. Twenty-five years helping executives turn better decisions into EPS and EBITDA. MOVE® is the method a leadership team uses to decide.
Where does the next $20M of growth come from?One question the board is asking, tested before the money moves. Illustrative.
Dials
Investment, next 12 months$8M
Market mixA 50 · B 30 · Partners 20
Channel focusChannel A, Direct test
Pricing+2%
Capability buildRecurring engine
Retention+5 pts
Readouts, 12 months
+$21MRevenue
+$4.6MEBITDA
1.8 → 2.6%Share, Market A
14 moPayback
31 moMonths to target
Capacity, BFirst constraint
Dials are yours. Readouts come from your numbers. How it is built →
1 · What this looks like
From what you already have to what you decide.
No new reports. The board deck, the financials and the monthly numbers become your strategy on one page in the first half-day. Then the questions the board is asking get tested as scenarios, dials set by you, before any money moves.
Illustrated for a company with a growth target it has not yet found the source of. The specifics change; the path does not. The current-state page and the full example →
Inputs you already haveBoard deck, financials, the monthly numbers, the market report. Nothing new to build.
Your current state, on one pageWhat is changing, where the money is, what you say no to, the numbers that matter. Tied to your P&L.
Scenario panelsYour questions, with the dials set by you. Options tested before any money moves.
DecisionsWhere to invest, what to fix, what to stop, what to tell the board. With names and dates.
2 · Is this your situation?
Strategy shows up when it matters most.
At your next board meeting, ask: "Which three product-markets carry next year's earnings commitment, who owns each, and what will we change if they fall short?" If the room goes quiet, the gap will close late in the year, with cost cuts.
Four situations. One of them, and the rest of this page is about you.
A new CEO, or a new owner.Listening tours, studies, committees. Six months in, still planning. The first hundred days need strategic clarity, or the next thousand are spent fighting for credibility.
An acquisition still to pay off.Cost synergies landed. The strategic intelligence you bought with the company is buried under process harmonisation, and the multiple has not been earned.
Many locations, or many P&Ls, that need their own plans.380 addresses are not one market. A corporate strategy that stops at the business unit leaves money on the table where the customer actually chooses.
A board commitment without a clear source."Growth across the portfolio" is in the plan. Which three product-markets carry next year's earnings, and who owns each, is not. The budget still funds departments.
3 · What has changed
Analysis is now free. Deciding is not.
If a one-page view of your business landed in your inbox, this is how it was built: three of your markets, public data, MOVE and AI, in minutes. The same method on a store in Paris, here.
Figures from MOVE, chapters 1 and 2, drawn from twenty-five years of client work, not a survey. What took a planning cycle now takes an afternoon. What neither AI nor MOVE can do is decide. That is still the CEO's job, and it is the only part Tim works on.
Watch: four minutes, full screenLoops automatically. Public data only. Illustrative.
A one-page view of your business, from public data, the same day.
Name your company and the three markets you care most about. One page, public data, MOVE and AI, back to you the same day. No deck, no call required.
Ask for the one page6 monthsAverage strategic planning cycle
30%Of senior executive time spent in planning meetings
18 monthsTypical time from strategy to implementation
10 minutesWhat a New York executive team needed, with AI and public data, to find the option and the risk three hours of flipcharts had missed
4 · What you get
A localised strategy with names on it, run every month, measured in EBITDA, free cash flow and EPS.
The problem is rarely the strategy or the target. It is the translation between them. The page makes the choices explicit: the executive team writes it, the CEO challenges it, the board tests it, and it is reviewed against actuals every month.
Strategy on a page
What the board needs to see
- The three product-markets carrying the earnings commitment, scored on profit, revenue, margin and volume. Three to invest in, a few to hold, at least one to exit.
- The accountable executive for each, and the exit or reallocation that funds the bets.
- Where AI will change a specific P&L line, and by how much. Plus the Strategic Numbers: a handful per product-market, each with an owner.
Execution on a page
Who moves the number, and when
- Three strategic projects. Each traced to a cell, with the EBITDA it moves, an owner and a timing.
- Root cause, by product-market. Every month: where the variance lives, why, and what was decided. Never on a consolidated number.
- The assumptions and triggers that would require a different decision, and the corrective action decided that month, with a name and a date.
- A conversation.Thirty minutes, CEO to CEO. The situation, not a deck.
- One day with your executive team.The matrix, the reality check, the criteria, three strategic projects. The pages are drafted by the people who deliver them.
- Every month, on the front foot.Root cause and corrective action against the P&L, and the scenarios re-run before the market moves, not after. AI narrows; the CEO decides. Tim stays in the room until your team doesn't need him there.
Value in action
An earnings commitment grounded in decisions and owners from Q1, rather than a target the CFO has to defend in Q4. That is how success is measured.
EBITDACapital stops leaking into cells with no advantage and concentrates where the margin is. Root cause by product-market finds the miss while it is still small.
Free cash flowFewer bets, funded properly. Exits release working capital; the monthly rhythm catches the slow bleed a consolidated number hides.
EPSFor a public company the same page, summarised, is what the market sees each quarter: where the number comes from, who owns it, what changed.
5 · Is it for you?
Built for your kind of company.
Same system, different realities. The unit is always the product-market: a product line, in a customer segment, in a geography.
Franchisors and multi-site operators380 addresses are not one market. Strategy at the unit, root cause where the variance lives, intelligence rolling up, decisions staying local.See a worked example →
PE-backed companies and their sponsorsThe hold period is the horizon. The value creation plan rewritten by the people who deliver it, one page for the CEO and the operating partner.See a worked example →
Industrial and manufacturingTwenty product-markets, three that make the money. A tariff review, an OEM book, a channel to exit. One page with owners beside the numbers.See a worked example →
Healthcare, health technology and servicesClinics, platforms and payers in one portfolio; acquisitions still to earn their multiple; recurring revenue with margin that leaks by segment. Which product-markets carry the number, and what the public market needs to see each quarter. CorVel and Apria have been in this room.See a worked example →
6 · Why Tim
Twenty-five years in the room. Eleven leaders on record.
Tim is not a consultant with a deck. He is a CEO, of Thinking Dimensions Global, with a method the leadership team uses to decide. Not a consultant who prescribes, not software that tracks. In the room as a peer until your team doesn't need him there.
Tim Lewko
CEO, Thinking Dimensions Global · Strategy advisor to CEOs · Author of MOVE
$2B+ client EBITDA · 100+ CEO engagements · 25 years
CorVel · Electrolux North America · DuraVent · Apria Healthcare · Selig Group
“In a world where generative AI is rewriting the rules of strategy, MOVE is a blueprint for how companies must rethink their approach to stay competitive.”
Michael Combs, President & CEO, CorVel Corporation (at the time)
Heard on and featured byCNBCFox BusinessMinter DialogueThinkers50Interviews on the Book page
7 · Ideas
Five ideas behind all of this. Each one a page you can forward.
1Read →2Read →3Read →4Read →5Read →
Analysis is now free. Deciding is not.
What took a strategy team a quarter now takes an afternoon. The scarce thing in a company is no longer knowing; it is deciding, and deciding still…
Where you make money is not where you think.
Most companies are in fifteen to twenty product-markets. Three or four make the money. Three or four lose it. The rest is noise, and the plan usually…
An AI strategy will get you fired.
Strategy is where a company will make money and why it will win. AI is a capability. A capability relative to a strategy the company has already…
Strategy on one page, tied to the P&L.
Most companies have a strategy deck and a monthly pack. Different authors, different months, different numbers. The EBITDA goes missing in the gap…
Long-range planning is over.
A plan is a snapshot of one future. A strategy that is a model can be re-run against any future: a competitor moves, a tariff lands, the sponsor…
Talk to Tim.
A short note about the decision in front of you is enough. Tim replies personally.
Or ask for a one-page view of your business, from public data, the same day.
MOVE® is available to license, embed or own. License MOVE · Tim is CEO of Thinking Dimensions Global