Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
March 20th, 2024
Watch the video recording above, or find the audio-only version through your preferred podcast platform using the links below.
Defining your strategic approach can make the difference between just playing the game and being truly successful in the marketplace. Yet, Gallup reports that only 22% of employees feel that leaders have a clear direction for the organization. Why? Because strategic planning is no simple feat. How do you stand out in a noisy marketplace? How do you maintain alignment across every level of an organization to support your company goals?
Strategy tools like the Playing to Win framework create a pathway forward to create a lasting, successful strategic direction. In this Leaders in the Arena episode, Bridge Innovate CEO Jenny Whitener discusses the Playing to Win framework outlined in the book Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by strategic advisor Roger Martin and the former Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Alan G. Lafley.
The following is a condensed summary of Jenny Whitener’s podcast on Playing to Win.
Jenny Whitener: Playing to Win is a process of creating a strategy for your company based on a set of strategic choices that helps your organization win with its customers against its competition. The framework is founded on three key ideas and focuses on making five key choices that set the stage for effective action across the organization.
The Three Key Ideas of Playing to Win
First, strategy is about making choices.
To win, a company must choose to do some things and not others. Michael Porter was the first to articulate this message in “Competitive Strategy.” He shares that to compete effectively, an organization must make choices: What they will do, what they won't do, who will do it, who they won't serve, who they will serve, where they will play, what resources they will devote, and so forth.
Making choices can feel daunting—there are many options in front of you. But without making choices, we can't win. We can't provide enough value to customers, give meaning to employees, or generate ongoing profits that sustain an organization over the long term. In the Playing to Win framework, strategy uniquely positions a business to create a sustainable advantage and value at a superior level.
Secondly, strategy is about increasing the odds of success but not guaranteeing it.
In strategy, there are no absolute answers. I think oftentimes, our clients come to us and think that we're just going to roll out steps one, two, and three. But it's really an exploratory process for a leadership team to define those success factors around how they'll enable the company to compete and win in the future. There's no way to eliminate uncertainties, but what you can do is use a structured methodology to increase the odds of success.
And thirdly, strategy combines rigor and creativity.
Crafting a strategy requires both the creativity to generate new possibilities and the rigor to test hypotheses and possibilities. Strategy should be creative and scientific — it involves generating and testing hypotheses.
Defining the Playing to Win Process
Playing to Win takes a slightly different approach than most traditional strategic planning processes. It differs by asking that you first articulate a strategic choice that you then analyze and test to refine possible hypotheses to land the strategy you'll invest in. Strategy is not a one-and-done thing. It takes agility and exploration. It's a really rigorous process full of asking and answering exploratory questions.
The book defines strategy as the answer to five interconnected and reinforcing questions.
What is our winning aspiration? — What’s the guiding purpose of the enterprise?
Where will we play? — What are the geographies, customer segments, channels, products, and stages of production in which we choose to compete?
How will we win? — What’s the competitive advantage we need to win in our chosen market?
What capabilities must we have? — What will we need to do at the highest level to win in that way?
What management systems do we need? — How will we build, support, and measure those capabilities?
Within a larger organization, you might answer these questions in cascades — starting with answering the question at the enterprise level, then taking that down to the divisional level, down to the individual product you’re selling. Thus, as you address each question, you begin to see the synergies and strategic alignment across each level of the organization. In the end, every layer of your organization is playing to win.
The Bridge Innovate Approach to Strategy
At Bridge, when launching a strategy process, we take a unique approach that follows these four simple things:
We bring our consulting team into a team structure with leaders from that company.
We want our clients to form a strategy team to work in partnership with us at Bridge. They bring all the institutional knowledge. They know their marketplace intentionally, their strengths, and their weaknesses. By having this collaborative approach, we can bring the process and our experience from working with other organizations, and they bring extraordinary commitment, passion, and institutional knowledge. Together, we form a strategy design team.
We define the strategic problem.
We want to understand problems that are inhibiting growth. What are the things derailing the momentum of the company? We take the time to really understand those problems first to determine how the new strategy will address them.
We frame strategic choices, explore the cascade, and test for the conditions that must be true.
An effective strategy aligns the team around a vision and determines where they want to go, how they'll win, and what capabilities are needed to deliver on the strategy. This next stage uses the strategic choices framework to explore each of the strategic problems. The cascade of questions helps us understand what needs to be true. We then test possible solutions to outline necessary capabilities.
We select the winning cascade and then apply the same tools across the organization.
Eventually, we select the winning cascade and apply the strategic tools across the organization at every level.
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Creating an organizational strategy has a powerful impact, trickling down to every aspect of your organization and providing a forward-thinking, clear vision to help you stay competitive. Strategic planning should inspire and empower you and focus your team's full creative capacity for growth. That’s why our strategy projects are custom-designed to do just that, aligning our recommendations to your unique mission, vision, and strategic initiatives so you can own your innovation strategy. Drive lasting growth in your company. Partner with Bridge and explore our growth services here.
Founded in 2003, Bridge Innovate is an SBA-certified woman-owned small business with 20+ years of experience in business innovation, leadership development, and organizational change. We’re on a mission to make a difference and to ignite creative leadership for growth and good.
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