Playing to Win

Is it just me, or has there been little evolution in strategy development tools over the past few decades?

Thirty years ago, models like SWOT, PESTLE, and Porter’s Five Forces dominated strategic management papers. Shout-out to all the Waikato Uni BMS students who hit the Bongo with me back in ’96—these analysis tools were the cornerstone of our studies and are still widely used today.

In fact, they made up a chunk of the strategy module in the Institute of Directors’ Company Directors’ Course that Darrin (our Wānaka director) attended last month. Another chunk was focused on a more modern tool: the Business Model Canvas (BMC), as brought to life by Osterwalder and Pigneur in their 2010 book Business Model Generation.

In contrast to traditional analysis tools, the BMC offers a cohesive strategic framework, unifying various business elements into a single visual chart. It’s a goodie and perhaps one of the most widely used models in contemporary strategy development.

On my eternal quest to Learn Useful Stuff, and pondering the perceived stagnation of strat-man tools, I recently stumbled upon Playing to Win, a new-to-me addition to the business strategy landscape. I was immediately enamoured by the logic of this new kid on the block, which seemed to be asking me:

Introduced in 2013 by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, Playing to Win is unlike conventional strategic planning processes where the emphasis is on planning and creating a perfect, detailed articulation of the company’s future. In Playing to Win, we make five key choices that set the stage for effective action across the organisation:

• What is our winning aspiration?
• Where will we play?
• How will we win?
• What capabilities must be in place?
• What management systems are required?

The framework is based on three key ideas:

1. Strategy is about choices.

To win, a company must choose to do some things and not others. To compete effectively, an organisation must make choices about what it will and won’t do, who it will and won’t serve, and where it will and won’t devote resources. When it fails to make choices, a company attempts to be all things to all people and winds up being largely mediocre.

Making choices can feel daunting, of course. We all like to keep our options open. But without making choices, we can’t win. We can’t provide enough value to customers, give meaning to employees, or generate the ongoing profits that sustain an organisation over the long term. In the Playing to Win framework, strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.

2. Strategy is about increasing our odds of success, not guaranteeing it.

In strategy, there are no absolute answers. We’re dealing with the future, and there is no way to eliminate uncertainties around customer response and competitor reaction, no matter how much planning and analysis we do. In the end, building a strategy isn’t about achieving perfection; it’s about improving our odds. The goal of the Playing to Win process is to help us generate and think through strategic possibilities, increasing our confidence in the choices we make.

3. Strategy-making combines rigour and creativity.

Crafting a strategy requires both the creativity to generate new possibilities and the rigour to test them.

The more I learn, trial, and test, the more I’m digging Playing to Win as a strategic business tool. If you’re keen to learn more, this 9-minute video is a great place to start: “A Plan Is Not a Strategy” by Roger Martin, HBR.

– Kelly