Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

Lafley ran Procter and Gamble and Martin was dean of the Rotman School, and they present strategy as a set of five choices that must be made together and must reinforce each other.

The five questions are: what is our winning aspiration, meaning the purpose stated as a definition of winning rather than as an ambition; where will we play, meaning the specific markets, segments, channels, geographies and product categories chosen and, equally, those excluded; how will we win, meaning the specific way the company will create value in the chosen area, which reduces to cost leadership or differentiation; what capabilities must be in place, meaning the activities the company must perform distinctively well; and what management systems are required, meaning the structures, measures and processes that build and maintain those capabilities.

Their argument is that these choices form a cascade, so that a change in one requires changes in the others, and that most strategy failures come from making some choices and not others, particularly from defining an aspiration without specifying where to play and how to win. The cases come from Procter and Gamble under Lafley, including Olay's repositioning from a low-price mass brand to a masstige position competing with department store products, the Bounty and Tide brand decisions, and the Gillette acquisition.

The framework is straightforward and the cases are told by the executive responsible, which makes them favourable. The book does not address how to generate options, only how to choose among them, which Martin covers better in his other work. The insistence that strategy consists of specific excluding choices is the durable point.