Playing To Win — Book Sumview(Summary and Review)
To Play merely to participate is self-defeating. It is a recipe for mediocrity. Winning is what matters — and it is the ultimate criterion of a successful strategy.
Very much like the title suggests A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin together unwind the path for the Business leaders to steer their Organizations to win in the market they are playing in. The book has stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this path to iconic brands such as Olay, Gillette, Pampers, Swiffer increasing its market value by more than$100 billion in just 10 years.
The duo describe the path of winning as Five Choices, One Framework, One Process.
As per them Strategy Is Choice. Strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: Winning aspirations, Where will we play? How to win?What core capabilities are required to win? What management systems are required to support the capabilities
The above picture represents what the authors call it as Strategic Choice Cascade. Each of the box representing a choice of the 5 critical choices and the book has a dedicated chapter for each choice.
Five Strategic Choices(Cascading)
- Winning Aspirations: what is the winning aspiration for the organization. This sets the frame for all other choices. Every organization must define a winning aspiration. This is the first choice and the driving choice.
Eg: For Olay a skin care brand of P&G the winning aspirations were defined as A market leadership in North America, $1 Billion in sales and a global share.
2. Where to Play: Represents the set of choices that narrow the competitive field. No Company can be all things to all people and still win.The questions to be asked focus on where the company will compete — in which markets, which customer, which channels, which product categories, which technologies.
Eg: Olay made 2 strategically decisive choices: consumer segment — women between age 35- 50 , channel — mass retailers, technology- an Anti Aging skin care product.
3. How to Win: Defines the choices to win on that field. To determine how to win, an organization must decide what will enable it to create unique value and sustainably deliver that value to the customers in a distinct way.The where to play and how to win choices should compliment each other.
Eg: Olay decided to address the seven signs of aging that the consumers could connect to. And was placed at $18.99 as a brand that was in between the mass market ($12.99) and the prestige market ($30 premium brands) . In the mass market it was seen as premium product at affordable price and in the prestige market it was a good product at reasonable price.
4. Core Capabilities: What capabilities must be in place to support the first two choices(where to play?How to win?). It relates to the range and quality of activities that will enable a company to win where it chooses to play. It may require deepening existing capabilities and building new ones or partnering with the experts. Deep Consumer understanding, Innovation, Brand building, Go-to-martket ability and scale are the core capabilities required for any organization.
Eg: Olay had to partner with product ingredient innovators, designers for providing a premium packaging, advertising and PR agencies and the key influencers.
5. Management Systems: What Systems, structures and skills are needed to support the capabilities.The systems need to ensure that choices are communicated to the whole company, employees are trained to deliver on choices, sustain capabilities over time and the efficacy of the choices and the progress towards the aspirations are measured.
Eg: Olay built supporting systems. Organized around innovation , created systems to partner with leading in-store marketing and design firms to create Olay displays.
All of the 5 choices are interdependent and reinforcing. If even a single choice doesn’t fit in, the other boxes need to be revisited to ensure that the strategy is successful.
One Framework — The Strategy Logic Flow
Having explained the Strategic Choice Cascade and argued that all 5 must be answered, coordinated and integrated to devise a powerful strategy, how and where do you start? The Strategy Logic Flow is a framework that guides you through to make the choices.
The authors mention that there are four dimensions you need to consider to choose where to play and how to win.
- The industry: What is the structure of your industry and attractiveness of its segment?
- Customers: What do your channel and end customers value?Channel customers here refer to the retailers. The value for your retailer is as important as the value for the customers. Else your product may not have a channel to reach the end customer
- Relative Position : How does your company fare, and how could it fare, relative to the competition
- Competition: What will your competition do in reaction to your chosen course of action
The authors have elaborated the flow with each of the box explained in detail with examples.
One Process -Reverse-engineering strategic options
This is what resonated the most with me. The Reverse-engineering strategic options is what Roger refers to his biggest learning from his biggest mistake.
Roger explains how in the traditional way any organization would go about dealing with a situation where they have to make a choice or devise a strategy and explains the potential pitfalls.
This process counters the pitfalls. It begins with having as many strategies devised to address a particular situation. And then ask the golden question for each of the strategy “What would have to be true for this strategy to work”. The answer to this question would be the conditions under which the group would move ahead with the strategy. The conditions which are least likely to hold(be possible) are identified as barriers. Tests are devised for each of the conditions. Tests are performed first for the barriers and then the other conditions. If any of them fails then the strategy is to be rejected. Below is a diagram of the process.
The authors have very nicely articulated what strategy is to them and illustrated it in depth with real time examples of the brands in P&G. The 5 choices, the framework and the process are well explained in detail with a chapter dedicated to each, illustrated with examples. At the end of each chapter there are DOS and DON’TS. There are examples of where P&G went wrong as well. This gives an insight of how your strategy could go wrong too.
The book appears to be a step by step guide of strategic thinking on how to have a sustainable competitive advantage and deliver distinctive value to your customers to make your product a success.I would recommend it for every individual at different levels of the organization(middle, upper management and business Leaders) who want to achieve business success.
Make the right choices the right way and win the game!
