About the book
A. G. Lafley, the former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, and his strategy adviser Roger L. Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, argue that strategy is simple in concept but hard in practice because it demands specific choices. They reduce it to five linked questions: the winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, which capabilities are required, and what management systems support those choices. The evidence is their own work at P&G, where in ten years sales doubled, profits quadrupled and market value rose by more than $100 billion. Stories about Gillette, Febreze, Olay, Swiffer and Bounty show the method applied to individual brands.
Meg Whitman said all of HP had organized around it and that she found it especially useful because organizations, above all at HP's size, find decisions hard, and Ramit Sethi included it in his list of 50 books he recommends.
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This book has 2 recommendations
Meg Whitman (CEO/HP)
The entire company has organized around "Playing to Win" which is a book written by A.G. Lafley and a colleague of his.
Listen, there are many ways to deploy strategy in companies. This is one I found to be particularly helpful because organizations have a lot of trouble making decisions, particularly at our scale.
So this notion of where to play, what countries, what market segments, what products, and where not to play because we can't do it profitably, has been a very good discipline. ...
And then once you determine where you're going to play, how to win. That is through a combination of where you are going to excel versus competitors.
It's actually been a really good common framework that we can apply across HP. It's easily understandable and actually forces the tough trade-offs.
Ramit Sethi (Founder/GrowthLab)
On Ramit Sethi’s Here are 50 books I recommend
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