Playing to Win Quotes

“Six Strategy Traps

1) The do-it-all strategy: failing to make choices, and making everything a priority. Remember, strategy is choice.

2) The Don Quixote strategy: attacking competitive "walled cities" or taking on the strongest competitor first, head-to-head. Remember, where to play is your choice. Pick somewhere you can have a choice to win.

3) The Waterloo Strategy: starting wars on multiple fronts with multiple competitors at the same time. No company can do everything well. If you try to do so, you will do everything weakly.

4) The something-for-everyone strategy: attempting to capture all consumer or channel or geographic or category segments at once. Remember, to create value, you have to choose to serve some constituents really well and not worry about the others.

5) The dreams-that-never-come-true strategy: developing high-level aspirations and mission statements that never get translated into concrete where-to-play and how-to-win choices, core capabilities, and management systems. Remember that aspirations are not strategy. Strategy is the answer to all five questions in the choice cascade.

6) The program-of-the-month strategy: settling for generic industry strategies, in which all competitors are chasing the same customers, geographies, and segments in the same way. The choice cascade and activity system that supports these choices should be distinctive. The more your choices look like those of your competitors, the less likely you will ever win.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

“The heart of strategy is the answer to two fundamental questions: where will you play, and how will you win there?”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Six Telltale Signs of a Winning Strategy

1) An activity system that looks different from any competitor's system. It means you are tempting to deliver value in a distinctive way.

2) Customers who absolutely adore you, and noncustomers who can't see why anybody would buy from you. This means you have been choiceful.

3) Competitors who make a good profit doing what they are doing. It means your strategy has left where-to-play and how-to-win choices for competitors, who don't need to attack the heart of your market to survive.

4) More resources to spend on an ongoing basis than competitors have. This means you are winning the value equation and have the biggest margin between price and costs and best capacity to add spending to take advantage of an opportunity to defend your turf.

5) Competitors who attack one another, not you. It means that you look like the hardest target in the (broadly defined) industry to attack.

6) Customers who look first to you for innovations, new products, and service enhancement to make their lives better. This means that your customers believe that you are uniquely positioned to create value for them.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

“Where to play selects the playing field; how to win defines the choices for winning on that field. It is the recipe for success in the chosen segments, categories, channels, geographies, and so on. The how-to-win choice is intimately tied to the where-to-play choice. Remember, it is not how to win generally, but how to win within the chosen where-to-play domains.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

“every line of business and function should have a strategy—one that aligns with the strategy of the company overall and decides where to play and how to win specifically for its context.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. It isn't. It is easily defined. It is a set of choices about winning. Again, it 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. Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions:

1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration.

2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration.

3. How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field.

4. What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way.

5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices.

These choices and the relationship between them can be understood as a reinforcing cascade, with the choices at the top of the cascade setting the context for the choices below, and choices at the bottom influencing and refining the choices above.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

“When a company sets out to participate, rather than win, it will inevitably fail to make the tough choices and the significant investments that would make winning even a remote possibility.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Strategy needn’t be mysterious. Conceptually, it is simple and straightforward. It requires clear and hard thinking, real creativity, courage, and personal leadership.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“a strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“When thinking about capabilities, you may be tempted to simply ask what you are really good at and attempt to build a strategy from there. The danger of doing so is that the things you’re currently good at may actually be irrelevant to consumers and in no way confer a competitive advantage. Rather than starting with capabilities and looking for ways to win with those capabilities, you need to start with setting aspirations and determining where to play and how to win. Then, you can consider capabilities in light of those choices. Only in this way can you see what you should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing in order to win.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“The most powerful aspirations will always have the consumer, rather than the product, at the heart of them.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Mission and vision statements are elements of strategy, but they aren’t enough. They offer no guide to productive action and no explicit road map to the desired future. They don’t include choices about what businesses to be in and not to be in. There’s no focus on sustainable competitive advantage or the building blocks of value creation.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Winning means providing a better consumer and customer value equation than your competitors do, and providing it on a sustainable basis.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“To make good choices, you need to make sense of the complexity of your environment. The strategy logic flow can point you to the key areas of analysis necessary to generate sustainable competitive advantage. First, look to understand the industry in which you play (or will play), its distinct segments and their relative attractiveness. Without this step, it is all too easy to assume that your map of the world is the only possible map, that the world is unchanging, and that no better possibilities exist. Next, turn to customers. What do channel and end consumers truly want, need, and value-and how do those needs fit with your current or potential offerings? To answer this question, you will have to dig deep-engaging in joint value creation with channel partners and seeking a new understanding of end consumers. After customers, the lens turns inward: what are your capabilities and costs relative to the competition? Can you be a differentiator or a cost leader? If not, you will need to rethink your choices. Finally, consider competition; what will your competitors do in the face of your actions? Throughout the thinking process, be open to recasting previous analyses in light of what you learn in a subsequent box. The basic direction of the process is from left to right, but it also has interdependencies that require a more flexible path through it.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

“It is far better to ask what your competitors will likely do before you proceed than to simply wait and see what happens. Only strategies that provide a sustainable advantage—or a significant lead in developing future advantages—are worth investing in.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“If aspirations are to be achieved, capabilities developed, and management systems created, progress needs to be measured. Measurement provides focus and feedback. Focus comes from an awareness that outcomes will be examined, and success or failure noted, creating a personal incentive to perform well. Feedback comes from the fact that measurement allows the comparison of expected outcomes with actual outcomes and enables you to adjust strategic choices accordingly.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“A strategy discussion is not an idea review. A strategy discussion is not a budget or a forecast review. A strategy discussion is how we are going to accomplish our growth objectives in the next three to five years.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“An activity system is of no value unless it supports a particular where-to-play and how-to-win choice.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Porter noted that powerful and sustainable competitive advantage is unlikely to arise from any one capability (e.g., having the best sales force in the industry or the best technology in the industry), but rather from a set of capabilities that both fit with one another (i.e., that don’t conflict with one another) and actually reinforce one another (i.e., that make each other stronger than they would be alone).”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Choosing where to play is also about choosing where not to play. This is more straightforward when you are considering where to expand (or not), but considerably harder when considering if you should stay in the places and segments you currently serve. The status quo—continuing on in the locations and segments you’ve always been—is all too often an implicit, unexamined choice. Simply because you have made a given where-to-play choice in the past is not a reason to stay there.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Who really is your best competitor? More importantly, what are they doing strategically and operationally that is better than you? Where and how do they outperform you? What could you learn from them and do differently?” Looking at the best competitor, no matter which company it might be, provides helpful insights into the multiple ways to win.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Many companies like to describe themselves as winning through operational effectiveness or customer intimacy. These sound like good ideas, but if they don’t translate into a genuinely lower cost structure or higher prices from customers, they aren’t really strategies worth having.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“Focus is a crucial winning attribute. Attempting to be all things to all customers tends to result in underserving everyone. Even the strongest company or brand will be positioned to serve some customers better than others. If your customer segment is “everyone” or your geographic choice is “everywhere,” you haven’t truly come to grips with the need to choose.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“A strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of where-to-play, how-to-win, core capability, and management system choices that uniquely meet a consumer’s needs, thereby creating competitive advantage and superior value for a business. Strategy is a way to win—and nothing less.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“A strategy that only works if competitors continue to do exactly what they are already doing is a dangerous strategy indeed.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“I have a view worth hearing, but I may be missing something.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“4. ¿Qué capacidades se necesitan? El conjunto y la configuración de capacidades necesarias para ganar según la forma elegida. 5. ¿Qué sistemas de gestión se necesitan? Los sistemas e indicadores que validan las capacidades y permiten elegir.”
― A.G. Lafley, Jugar para ganar: Cómo funciona realmente la estrategia de empresa

“Una estrategia es un conjunto coordinado e integrado de decisiones sobre dónde jugar, cómo ganar, sobre cuál es la capacidad esencial y sobre cuál es el sistema de gestión, destinadas a satisfacer perfectamente las necesidades de un consumidor, creando una ventaja competitiva y aumentando el valor para el negocio. La estrategia es una forma de ganar. Fin de la película.”
― A.G. Lafley, Jugar para ganar: Cómo funciona realmente la estrategia de empresa

“First, there would be no presentation, only a discussion of the strategic issues agreed on in advance. Second, we limited the number of folks in the room, down from twenty-five to just four or five from the business plus the CEO and the corporate leaders who would bring specific experience or knowledge on the strategy issue. Third, participants would not be allowed to bring more than three new pages of material to the meeting to share—we did not want the participants to race off and create yet another PowerPoint deck with answers to the questions raised in the letter.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works

“there are some common signs that a winning strategy is in place. Look for these, for your own business and among your competitors. An activity system that looks different from any competitor’s system. It means you are attempting to deliver value in a distinctive way. Customers who absolutely adore you, and noncustomers who can’t see why anybody would buy from you. This means you have been choiceful. Competitors who make a good profit doing what they are doing. It means your strategy has left where-to-play and how-to-win choices for competitors, who don’t need to attack the heart of your market to survive. More resources to spend on an ongoing basis than competitors have. This means you are winning the value equation and have the biggest margin between price and costs and the best capacity to add spending to take advantage of an opportunity or defend your turf. Competitors who attack one another, not you. It means that you look like the hardest target in the (broadly defined) industry to attack. Customers who look first to you for innovations, new products, and service enhancement to make their lives better. This means that your customers believe that you are uniquely positioned to create value for them.”
― A.G. Lafley, Playing to win: How strategy really works