Being bound does not entail being confined. While there might be a tension or some uncertainty as to who or what is in control, I do know that I do not feel as if I am a function of an algorithm, and that this is irreducible and uncontestable, whether or not at some other level of analysis it is illusory.

Reverse-engineering strategic options:

(Lafley and Martin, “Playing to Win”, p.187) “1. Frame the Choice

As a general rule, an issue—for example, declining sales or technology change in the industry—can’t be resolved until it is framed as a choice. Until a real choice (e.g., should the company go in this direction or that one?) is articulated, team members can’t understand cognitively or feel emotionally the consequences of the different ways to resolve the issue. A team could talk endlessly about declining sales, making no progress toward solving the problem...

With Olay, framing the choice was crucial. It made the stakes clear immediately. Rather than agonizing endlessly about what to do with a fading brand, the team framed the choice and provided an impetus to action. The team laid out two possibilities: it could attempt to transform Oil of Olay into a worthy competitor to brands like Lancôme and La Prairie, or it could spend billions of dollars to buy a major existing skin-care brand to compete

instead.” (Lafley and Martin, “Playing to Win”, p.188-189) “2. Generate Strategic Possibilities

Framing the issue as a choice identifies a preliminary set of options for resolving the problem; the next task is to broaden the list of possibilities. The objective in this step is to be inclusive rather than restrictive of the number and diversity of possibilities on the table. Here is the opportunity to encourage creative and more-unexpected strategies. In this

context, a possibility should be expressed as a narrative or scenario, a happy story that describes a positive outcome. That is why we like to call them possibilities rather than options. Characterizing the possibilities as stories helps ensure that they are not seen negatively as unsubstantiated opinions. No one is yet arguing for a possibility; you and your colleagues are simply envisioning a world in which that story makes good sense...

Culling a possibility about which a particular individual feels strongly may well cause that individual to withdraw, perhaps for the rest of the process. So inclusion, rather than exclusion, is the rule at this stage...

In the end, the P&G beauty team focused on five where-to-play and how- to-win possibilities for skin care. One was to largely give up on Oil of Olay and to acquire a major global skin-care brand. A second was to keep Oil of Olay positioned as an entry-priced, mass-market brand, strengthening its appeal to current consumers by leveraging R&D capabilities to improve wrinkle-fighting performance. A third was to take Oil of Olay up- market into the prestige distribution channel as an upscale brand. A fourth was to reinvent Olay totally—as a prestige-like brand that appealed more broadly to younger women (age thirty-five to fifty), but sold in the traditional mass channels with retail partners that would be willing to create a masstige experience with a special display section in the store. A fifth was to extend the Cover Girl brand from cosmetics into skin care.

1. Specify Conditions

Once a diverse set of possibilities is established, the team then needs to reverse engineer the logic of each possibility. That is, it needs to specify what must be true for the possibility to be a terrific choice. Notice, this step is decidedly not for arguing about what is true, but rather for laying out the logic of what would have to be true for the group to collectively commit to a choice...

This process is a form of reverse engineering because the starting point is the (tentative) assumption that the conclusion is valid—namely, that this is a great possibility. The team then works to understand the conditions under which that assumption is correct. It works backward to declare the various conditions that would have to hold for this to be a great possibility. Figure 8-3 shows the logic flow of this reverse-engineering exercise. In each of the seven boxes, you can list what would have to be true along that dimension for the option in question to be valid.

Laying out the conditions: To pursue this possibility, what would have to be true?

“REVERSE-ENGINEERING DOS AND DON’TS

• Don’t spend a lot of time up front analyzing everything you can; instead, use reverse

engineering to pinpoint only what you really need to know.

• Do frame a clear and important choice up front; make it real and significant.

• Do explore a wide range of where-to-play and how-to-win possibilities, rather than narrowing the list early on to those that feel realistic; unexpected possibilities often have interesting and helpful elements that can otherwise be dismissed out of hand. Learn from them.

• Do stay focused on the most important question (what would have to be true for this to be a winning possibility?), listing the conditions under which this possibility would be a really good one.

• Don’t forget to go back and eliminate any nice-to-have conditions; every condition should be truly binding—if it weren’t true, you wouldn’t pursue the possibility.

• Do encourage skeptics to express concerns at the specify-barriers stage; have them articulate the precise nature of their concerns about specific conditions.

• Don’t have proponents of a given possibility set and perform the tests; ask the

skeptics to do it. If the skeptics are satisfied in the end, everyone else will be too.

• Do test the biggest barrier first. Start with the condition the group feels is least likely to be true. If it isn’t true, the conditions required do not hold and you can stop testing.

• Do use a facilitator to run the reverse-engineering process; it helps to have someone to attend to process and group dynamics as you work through the thinking tasks.