P&G’s where-to-play and how-to-win-choices aren’t appropriate for every context. The key to making the right choices for your business is that they must be doable and decisive for you. If you are a small entrepreneurial firm facing much larger competitors, making a how-to-win choice on the basis of scale would not make much sense. But simply because you are small doesn’t mean winning through scale is impossible.

“CHOICE CASCADE DOS AND DON’TS:

At the end of each chapter, we will share a few quick bits of advice—the things you should do or should avoid doing as you apply the lessons of the chapter to your own business.

• Do remember that strategy is about winning choices. It is a coordinated and integrated set of five very specific choices. As you define your strategy, choose what you will do and what you will not do.

• Do make your way through all five choices. Don’t stop after defining winning, after choosing where to play and how to win, or even after assessing your capabilities. All five questions must be answered if you are to create a viable, actionable, and sustainable strategy.

• Do think of strategy as an iterative process; as you uncover insights at one stage in the cascade, you may well need to revisit choices elsewhere in the cascade.

• Do understand that strategy happens at multiple levels in the organization. An organization can be thought of as a set of nested cascades. Keep the other cascades in mind while working on yours.

• Do remember that there is no one perfect strategy; find the distinctive choices that

work for you.

The Heart of Strategy:

Where to play is about understanding the possible playing fields and choosing between them. It is about selecting regions, customers, products, channels, and stages of production that fit well together—that are mutually reinforcing and that marry well with real consumer needs. Rather than attempt to serve everyone or simply buy a new playing field or accept your current choices as inevitable, find a strong set of where-to-play choices.”

(Lafley and Martin, “Playing to Win”, p.72) “WHERE-TO-PLAY DOS AND DON’TS:

• Do choose where you will play and where you will not play. Explicitly choose and prioritize choices across all relevant where dimensions (i.e., geographies, industry segments, consumers, customers, products, etc.).

• Do think long and hard before dismissing an entire industry as structurally unattractive; look for attractive segments in which you can compete and win.

• Don’t embark on a strategy without specific where choices. If everything is a priority, nothing is. There is no point in trying to capture all segments. You can’t. Don’t try.

• Do look for places to play that will enable you to attack from unexpected directions, along the lines of least resistance. Don’t attack walled cities or take on your strongest competitors head-to-head if you can help it.

• Don’t start wars on multiple fronts at once. Plan for your competitors’ reactions to your initial choices, and think multiple steps ahead. No single choice needs to last forever, but it should last long enough to confer the advantage you seek.

• Do be honest about the allure of white space. It is tempting to be the first mover into unoccupied white space. Unfortunately, there is only one true first mover (as there is only one low-cost player), and all too often, the imagined white space is already occupied by a formidable competitor you just don’t see or understand.

This is the fourth and final element of the logic flow. The question to address is this: is there some competitive response that could undermine or trump the where-to-play and how-to-win choices?

Inevitably, this is guesswork to some degree; you can’t know for sure what a competitor will or won’t do in the face of your actions. But forming a thoughtful hypothesis is important. 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. You don’t want to design and build a strategy that a competitor can copy in a heartbeat, or one that will prove ineffective against a simple defensive maneuver on a competitor’s part.

A strategy that only works if competitors continue to do exactly what they are already doing

is a dangerous strategy indeed.

STRATEGY LOGIC FLOW DOS AND DON’TS:

• Do explore all four critical dimensions of strategy choice: industry, customers, relative position, and competition.

• Do look beyond your current understanding of the industry, pushing to generate new ways of segmenting the market.

• Don’t accept that entire industries are or must be unattractive; explore the drivers of

different dynamics in different segments, and ask how the game could be changed.

• Do consider both channel and end consumer value equations; if only one of these constituents is happy, your strategy is a fragile one. A winning strategy is a win-win-win; it creates value for consumers, customers, and the company.

• Don’t expect either the channel or the end consumers to tell you what constitutes value;

that is your job to figure out.

• Don’t be blasé about your relative capabilities or costs; compare them with those of your

best competition, and really push to understand how you can win against them.

• Do explore a range of possible competitive reactions to your choices, and ask under what conditions competitors could block you from winning.