Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

Clients, colleagues, and students often ask me to recommend business books that have helped me as a consultant and educator. Playing to Win--How Strategy Really Works by A.G. Lafley and Roger. L. Martin is a book I've been recommending recently for a couple of reasons. First, it provides the reader with a simple definition of "strategy" which is made even clearer by the authors' explanation of what is not "strategy." Second, the authors take the reader through a rigorous and replicable journey that elucidates how strategy is conceived. Lafley and Martin demonstrate that: * "Strategy is about making specific choices to win in the marketplace," and decisions related to "Where to play?" and "How to win?" are critical in this respect. * Strategy is conceived through an iterative, narrowing down process that determines "an integrated set of choices [a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems] that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value [for customers and shareholders] relative to its competition." The authors' stated intent is to provide the reader with "a do-it-yourself" guide to strategy and they achieve this admirably. This is largely due to the "playbook" they've presented for "crafting strategy" in an organization. This "playbook" includes: * The strategic choice cascade: explaining "the nature of the [five] choices to be made" in conceiving strategy. * The strategy logic flow: "a framework designed to helpfully direct your thinking to the key analyses that inform your five strategy choices." * Reverse engineering: "a specific methodology for making sense of conflicting strategic options" through exploring the question: "What would have to be true?" for each "strategic possibility to be a potentially winning choice." Their five strategic choices, framework, and process for conceiving strategy are easily comprehended through the numerous well-chosen examples. And, the replicable nature of this "playbook" to guide you in conceiving strategy quickly becomes apparent. Playing to Win--How Strategy Really Works adds a valuable perspective to the practice of strategy and is well worth reading. If "making specific choices to win" is at the heart of strategy, this is one book that provides you with a winning "playbook" to improve your odds of success in the marketplace.

Ten years after this book was published in 2013, it has proven to be a timeless, business classic. Here are just a few of the many, many very valuable takeaways: 1. The book was written by strategic experts: The former chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, who helped his company grow by leaps and bounds, and the consultant who acted as his thinking partner. Both were influenced by the famous business strategist Michael Porter. Adding on a number of the authors’ own well-acclaimed ideas, the book is essentially “Porter in Action” and in interesting story form. 2. Here is the authors’ definition of strategy: “Strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.” 3. Strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions (leading to the choices you make): a. “What is your winning aspiration [strongly desired goal or objective] (the purpose of your enterprise, its motivation aspiration)?” b. “Where will you play (a playing field where you can achieve that aspiration)?” c. “How will you win (the way you will win on the chosen playing field)?” [b & c are key!] d. “What [core] capabilities must be in place (the set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way)?” e. “What management systems are required (the systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices)?” 4. The book was written in case study form, typical of a Harvard Business School approach. It looks at a number of key, well-known P&G products the authors strategized about, going through each strategy in detail, and showing you the myriad considerations (what to do and what not to do) for each. 5. Look for synergy, “reinforcing rods,” etc. in all the parts of your strategy. 6. Run true experiments, testing, and measuring the results of your actions. Importantly, start with a prediction or hypothesis and see if it proves true, and if not, why not. Learn! 7. Of critical importance, ask the right question: “What would have to be true [for the strategy to work] (what came to be the heart of the consultant author’s practice)? 8. Strategizing is an endless practice! Bottom-line: The authors show you the strategic principles of exactly how they played and won big, techniques scalable from a giant company like Proctor and Gamble down to your own small business proprietorship. Highly recommended! Of possible interest, a book on winning strategies used throughout history by 87 other master strategists Strategic Advantage: How to Win in War, Business, and Life

A very good book on strategy for two reasons: - it explains what strategy is, why is needed and how to build one for your company, with frameworks and models to help you throughout the process - it does the above in a concise and simple manner, using plain vocabulary and language everyone can understand, even if you're not into management. I'm a pragmatic person. While I value the theoretical explanations on such topics like this one, I need to see how to put those into action so results can appear. This book contains advice that can be implemented as you go through the process of creating your strategy. It can really help you taking decisions, which is the core of making a strategy and put it in place. Reason for four stars and not five is that all examples taken are from a single company (P&G). While I do appreciate the complexity of its scale and problems, it is also very singular in many aspects. For a methodology to be fully tested and proven, I believe it needs to be put through other scenarios and companies, to then see the different results. That you won't find on this book. But it still is worth reading for anyone wanting to know how to create a strategy.

I found the authors' break down of what strategy is quite compelling. Throughout the book, they present a simplified framework to tackle strategy (what winning is, where to play, how to win, which capabilities and management systems are needed) and provide real world examples of how these concepts and implementations played out at P&G. Overall, I think it's a great guide to strategic thinking, especially in a VUCA environment (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), which I agree with the authors, is the new normal for today's businesses. Quotes: - Too often, CEOs in particular will allow what is urgent to crowd out what is really important. - Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. It isn’t. It is easily defined. It is a set of choices about winning.

If you want have a good conversation with business executives --- whether you are a salesman, consultant, mid level manager or even an individual contributor --- you need business acumen otherwise you will quickly lose credibility with them. The antidote to losing your credibility with C-level types is to read "Playing To Win" by A. G. Lafley and Roger Martin. The business executives expect you to understand them in the way they think and approach their business, which means you have to know and talk strategy with them. As business executives they know that in order to win, a company needs to develop a solid strategy, execute flawlessly and deliver excellent customer experience. If they do this well, their companies will thrive and, if not, they will quickly become irrelevant. This book will help you understand how to have a productive conversations with business executives because you will know how important strategy is to them in gaining competitive advantage. The book dissects it from the very top, which is that strategy is all about winning and then goes deeper on why, what and how of a strategy which will not only give you gravitas when you talk to business executives but also learn how to apply it to your unique situation. Again, the main idea of this book is that you are in business for one thing: "You play to win the game." The authors define a business strategy simply as a set of choices a company makes to win. The book is based mainly on what the authors learned at Proctor & Gamble when A;G. Lafley was the CEO. Working with the leading business and management thought leaders, a strategy consisted of coordinating and integrating the following five choices: What is a company's winning aspiration? Where should the company play? How should the company play to win? What are company's core capabilities? What are company's management systems that has to be leveraged? The authors explain on how these choices were used with various examples, including Olay, innovation in outsourcing, integration of Gillette and others and various techniques used to reach a strategic decision. This is not a book you read, but study before, during and after so you get the most out of it and start creating your own playbook on strategy that is applicable to your specific situation. I highly recommend this book since it is a distillation of years of research, experience, collaboration and results where the authors clearly take you inside the corporate "war room" where they consider various options before making a decision and then walk the readers through the results of the strategic decision. Though picking top 10 business books is tough since there are so many good business books written, but I feel this book definitely belongs in everyone's top 10 business books list for 2013.

This book was recommended to me by my boss. Well, actually he just gave me the condensed HBR version, and i decided that it would be a good idea to follow through and just read the book. I was very pleasantly surprised. Having studied management I've already read my fair share of books on business strategy. Most of them focus on the analytic tools, SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, Porter's 5 forces model (and all of its variations), VRINE, etc ... But say very little on how you actually put it all together and turn that analyzes into strategy, and the strategy into something that you really can do. Seeing the world in two by two matrix, by itself, will get you nowhere, you will need actions to move forward. Lafley's book does exactly this. He presents a real working framework, that will assist you in attaining a winning strategic aspiration,then putting in place the strategy to get there, and finally how to make sure that that strategy is translated into actions. However, this book stops just one very-short steep of being an all time strategy classic. Except from the very last chapters, where Lafley gives examples from his pre-PG career, all of the practical examples in the book are from PG. It would be much more enlightening for the reader to have other cases, from other industries, to illustrate the framework. Finally,i would just like to highlight the quality and simplicity of the annexes that explain basic micro-economic concepts. Not all the readers of the book have had the opportunity to study micro-economics, and hence some might feel somewhat lost while reading the book. I must that the way Lafley explains and illustrates these concepts in the most simple and elegant way.

Great companies do not become great by accident; they become great through the strategic choices they make. Great companies do not remain great by inertia; they remain great through the strategic choices they make. Procter and Gamble (P&G) is a great company by any measure. In 2012, it recorded $83.68 billion dollars in sales and Fortune magazine ranked the company the fifth most admired in the world. Lafley was the Chairman and CEO of (P&G) through one of the most challenging periods in its history. When he took over the leadership position P&G was no longer delivering the outstanding returns. P&G was considered too big to continue being a growth stock. With Lafley at the helm, it achieved the near impossible, growth at a pace rarely associated with mature, enormous firms. This book is about how a strong commitment to strategy, at every level, and in every part of the organization made this possible. In P&G's case, this was not a commitment to the board’s strategy, (a surprisingly rare event anywhere,) but a strong commitment to thinking about one’s division, department or business unit using a strategy method. Strategy is one of the most misused and misunderstood concepts in business. Lafley cites ideas often mistaken for strategy. ‘Strategy’ is often misunderstood as ‘a vision,’ which offers no guidance “to productive action and no explicit road map to the desired future.” Strategy is not a plan or a set of tactics; those are only elements of strategy. Strategy is certainly not leaving control to chance and watching what emerges. Strategy is not following best practices -sameness is not strategy, it is a recipe for mediocrity. Strongly committed to some of the principles espoused by Michael Porter and to using his terminology, Lafley and co-author, Professor Roger Martin, describe their playbook: Five Choices, One Framework, One Process. The title “Playing to Win” is a central theme of Lafley’s approach. “Winning should be at the heart of any strategy,” in fact, it would make no sense to Lafley to aspire to anything less than winning. In order to beat the competition, two key questions need to be answered. They are – “where to play,” and “how to win.” The strategic decisions made for P&G products are used to illustrate the application of this method. The skincare product, Oil of Olay, was getting “tired” and sales were declining, but brand recognition was still strong, and it was still profitable. People were calling Oil of Olay, “Oil of Old Lady.” Applying the question, where should it play, they identified that the existing customers were price sensitive and only minimally invested in skin care. However, they also identified a new set of customers, who had real growth potential, the thirty-five-plus age cohort that was beginning to notice their first lines and wrinkles. To win, P & G scientists went to work on sourcing and developing better and more effective compounds. This would create a skin-care product that could dramatically outperform existing products in the market. Olay fits in a product category where price is an indicator of value, but P&G was designed for mass markets, and so they developed an additional category, “masstige” a mass-market prestige version of their product. Priced high enough to give substantial margins, indicate value, and appeal to the upper end of the mass market, they revitalise the brand, attracted a younger consumer, and expanded their offering. They had answered the strategic question, “where to play,” and “how to win.” These strategic questions were followed by the operationalization of the answers in the form of two other questions: What capabilities must be in place and what management systems would be required to ensure successful implementation. Strategic thinking using the five principles was not the preserve of the board - rather it was a process to be followed everywhere in the organization. Using the same strategy process, the marketing department reformulated their mandate. An essential element in P&G’s company strategy is the classification of the customer as “the Boss” whose needs must be understood accurately and satisfied better than expected. To this end, marketing defined where they should play as the conducting of innovative market research using edgy techniques. All conventional research, such as surveys and focus groups, would be outsourced. They could have chosen to play in the conventional research field and outsourced the edgy techniques, but chose not to in order to serve their customer more effectively than an external provider could. Strategy is all about making choices. This is not a ‘how-to’ book on strategy according to Porter. Porter, an industrial economist turned strategist, was in his prime in the 80s. His thinking is still relevant to behemoths in manufacturing, with some important modifications. He is certainly not applicable to many other businesses without modification and manipulation. This extremely valuable book is a testament to the importance of instituting thinking strategically throughout an organization to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. This is the first comprehensive account of this means I have ever come across, and what a powerful example at that. P&G has had an outstanding record during some of the most difficult years in business and has succeeded. Take this seriously. Very seriously. Readability Light --+-- Serious Insights High -+--- Low Practical High -+--- Low Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy

General idea of the book is that it’s important to have a winning strategy for your company if you want to stay in business. The two most important parts of this strategy come from the company’s choices of where-to-win and how-to-win. Once you decide to whom you want to sell your product/service it is essential that you align your how to this decision and really prioritize all efforts to deliver on this choice. That prioritization includes designing your processes to accomplish the end result of the where/how to win choices you made. Interesting book for basic strategy exercises, wished it had a more update version. Not sure if everything stated is still valid after 12 years.