Playing to Win
About this book
Lafley and Martin frame strategy as five cascading choices. What is our winning aspiration, where will we play, how will we win, what capabilities must be in place, and what management systems are required. Drawn largely from Procter and Gamble, with detailed treatment of the reverse engineering technique for testing strategy options and the strategy logic flow. Concrete about making the choices genuinely exclusive.
Description via Product Digest.
Topics
Related concepts
- Opportunity scoringComparing candidate opportunities against consistent criteria so the choice is made on the same basis every time, and so a rejected opportunity can be shown why it was rejected.
- Distinctive competenciesThe things an organisation can do that competitors cannot easily copy, and the filter that decides which market problems are worth this company solving.
- How to Define a Product Market and Identify Customer AlternativesDefine a market by customer, problem, buying context and alternatives before choosing a target segment or estimating market size.
- Build vs Buy vs Partner: How to Make a Product Capability DecisionCompare strategic importance, service requirements, total costs and exit risks before deciding whether to build, buy or partner.
- What Is Competitive Advantage in Product Strategy?Distinguish a product feature from a customer advantage and explain how capabilities, costs and evidence support a reason to win.
- How to Do Competitive Analysis for Product StrategyCompare direct competitors, substitutes and the status quo, then use five forces to examine the pressures on pricing and profitability.
- Product Strategy Non Goals: How to Say No and Handle ExceptionsWrite clear exclusions with a reason, owner and review condition. Respond to competing requests without turning a temporary choice into a permanent ban.
- Strategy Under Uncertainty: Scenarios, Options and Decision TriggersUse scenarios and staged commitments when forecasting is unreliable. Includes a practical example of preserving an option without postponing every decision.
- What Is Product Strategy? How to Make and Explain Strategic ChoicesDefine a product strategy with a target customer, a reason to choose the product, resource choices and evidence. Includes a worked example and a strategy writing exercise.
- How to Write a Value Proposition Customers Can EvaluateConnect a target customer, important problem, relevant alternative and credible benefit. Includes a worked value proposition and a customer testing exercise.
- Strategic alignmentHow a project connects to the organisation's strategy through the portfolio and programme layers above it, and what to do when the strategy moves while the project is still running.