Book Review: Playing to win

Playing to win, is an easy-to-read book that looks at one approach to strategy and allows readers at any level to grasp the fundamentals. It enables the reader to understand the lens of their strategy leaders and how to effectively contribute in future strategy sessions.

Strategy is subjective, it sparks broad opinions, has multiple approaches and frameworks, with no real clear definition of what it is, or consensus on how to best build one. ‘Playing to win’ emphasises the key element of CHOICE.  The choice to create a discipline around strategic thinking, strategic practice, and making explicit and specific choices to win in the marketplace.

“Deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver unique value.”

The foundation being that those specific choices should create sustainable advantage and superior value in the ultimate race to win. It is emphasised that strategy isn’t easy, “there is no algorithm for choice”, it takes challenged thinking, dedicated effort, and investment to be effective.

 So where do people get strategy wrong? They:

1) Define strategy as a vision. 2) Define strategy as a plan 3) Deny the possibility of long term and [even] medium term strategy. 4) Define strategy in terms of optimisation. 5) Define strategy as best practice. The problem being best practice implies everyone should be doing it - resulting in generic practices - a recipe for mediocrity.

This book successfully demystifies strategy and encourages contribution and collaboration brought from multiple ranks within a business. This can be achieved through teams understanding the strategy choice cascade. This cascade displays that;

“Strategy is a moving and iterative process with all the moving parts linked and influencing each other.” 

The strategy cascade playbook

An integrated set of choices, this reinforcing cascade provides context at the top which in-turn influences the choices above.  The 5 interconnected choices to make through one framework as outlined:

1.         What is your winning aspiration? An ideal future state, with benchmarks to measure progress. Seen as the starting point to anchor strategy, aspirations are the guiding purpose, the reason to exist (ideally framed around the customer.)  Noted that too modest aspirations are far more deadly than lofty ones. The choice here is choosing to play to win not simply playing to play.

2.         Where to play? and how to win are highly intertwined and form the heart of strategy transformation. Where to play highlights the importance of understanding the playing fields (with competitors in mind) and then through imagination and effort selecting the playing fields that fit well together. These are the places where you’ll find ways to win, while also  deciding where not to play. Focus is a crucial winning attribute here, as is context, married with some luck.

3.         How to win? (within the chosen “where-to-play” domain) is the recipe for success covering segments, categories, and channels. Sustainable competitive advantage is the ultimate winning outcome, which comes sandwiched between choosing either a low cost or a differentiation strategy (higher margins through lower cost or higher margins though differentiation ). Strategy is only valuable if leaning on a robust and actionable how-to-win plan where effort is best spent on creating new how-to-win choices where no one else exists.

4.         Core capabilities involves playing to your strengths. The range and quality of activities that enable you to win. These capabilities (be it consumer, branding, R&D, GTM, global infrastructure, back office) act as nodes that operate as a system that support and reinforce each other. Identifying and articulating the capabilities (distinguishing between core and critical) that will deliver the choices make crystallising where focus and investment is needed (and eliminates those not ) for successful strategy delivery. The aim is to build a sustainable structure and distinctive activity system that is not easily replicated in order to maintain meaningful competitive advantage.

5.         Management systems is often the most forgotten step and the one likely to cause failure if not established to support, foster, and measure strategic choices and capabilities. This step provides focus and feedback on the strategy with specificity and simplicity of metrics being crucial for success. These systems should be built on an internal rhythm that keep focus on the things that matter.

Fundamentally, the book emphasises the focus on how to accomplish growth objectives through a collaborative and iterative nature. Encouraging strategy to be tackled collectively by senior leaders with diverse perspectives bringing depth and breadth of expertise, to bring objectivity and scepticism. It offers a robust strategic logic flow which provides a framing mechanism for thoughtful analysis to be given to each step.

With a focus on real world examples of winning and losing strategies and tactics from large FMCG companies operating within complex environments, (showcasing branding, innovation, turnaround, and M&A activities), it will mostly benefit those not already working in [pure] strategy roles with the core lessons being transferable and valuable for people at any stage of their career. Although the book is repetitive, the wealth of examples provides great context to make the theories sticky, and the list of dos and don’ts at the end of each chapter provide a useful summary.

It creates and frames the mechanisms on where to start, how to progress, and how to communicate strategy outcomes effectively across an organisation. Note: through simple, unambiguous content that captures the heart of the intent, repeated over and over again. I particularly liked the section on how to have conversations about strategy (relevant to how to have conversations in general really!) by introducing a communication method called assertive inquiry, which involves advocating your own thinking while having exploration into the reasoning of peers.

Overall, an informative and digestible book for individuals at any stage of their career to understand “how strategy really works” - it’s not about perfection, it’s about shortening your odds!