Data-Driven Strategy: KPIs, Unit Economics, Decisions

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

A strategy becomes checkable at the moment it can be calculated. Until then it is a set of intentions with a budget attached, and everyone in the room can agree with it while meaning different things.

Where strategy stops being arguable

Someone says the company should move upmarket. Everyone nods. Nobody asks what that does to acquisition cost, what the payback period becomes, which products in the portfolio it starves, or at what point the funnel stops converting. Those questions are not hostile — they are the only way to tell a strategy from a preference. I have sat in rooms where the loudest argument won because nobody present could do the arithmetic quickly enough to challenge it.

What this course actually covers

Six blocks, each giving a strategy a different numerical footing. First, the context you measure inside: market structure, Porter's five forces, the Boston matrix, economic instruments, regulation, risk, and the three financial statements. Second, the product: reading a portfolio, deciding what to invest in or retire, the North Star metric and the supporting set, monetisation models and unit economics with the lifetime value to acquisition cost relationship. Third, revenue as a system — the funnel from lead to money, where it leaks, service agreements between functions, and connecting team metrics to the profit and loss. Fourth, designing the measures themselves: critical success factors, deriving indicators from them, displaying them properly, and the six myths that break most measurement systems. Fifth, eight lessons on a company that built its decisions on data and published the method rather than only the conclusions. Sixth, converting all of it into a strategic plan with owners, metrics and dates.

A note on two of the blocks

Sixteen of the forty-five lessons carry a people-side accent: the finance block closes with justifying a function's initiatives, and the Google block is about decisions concerning people. That case is here precisely because it is one of the few times a company published its methodology rather than its conclusions. The apparatus throughout — STEEPLE, five forces, the Boston matrix, the three statements, unit economics — does not change by department.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 45 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: five forces, the Boston matrix, the three statements, the North Star and AARRR sets, unit economics, the revenue funnel, impact mapping, the 10-80-10 rule, the two-day session agenda

• Real cases from Google and others

Where to start

Take the biggest strategic claim your company made this year and write down the single number that would prove it wrong. If you cannot name one, the claim is not yet a strategy. Enrol now and start today.