The #1 Reason Your Competitors Are Beating You
Are you a leader struggling to achieve your vision? Are your “winning” strategies good in theory but lackluster in reality? ls your market dominated by a few giants that leave you feeling like David facing Goliath?
You’re not alone if you’ve ever felt this way. I’ve experienced this at many different points in my life—in sports, school, and business.
The first time was in junior high when I tried out for the basketball team. Growing up I was always athletic, reasonably fast, a good jumper, and until this moment a great basketball player. Our team was good but not great, and I felt I would have a great chance of making the team. That was until I showed up for the first day of tryouts.
I was like, “Where did they find these giants?” The first thing they did was weigh and measure all of us. Buzz Harris and I were the only two kids that were not even five feet tall. The rest of these kids looked like seven-footers. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but some of these kids were dunking, and there were a few kids that were 6′7″ in 8th grade. Even the ones who were not so tall made me feel like I was running in place. Sure enough, I choked on the second day, rolled my ankle and used that as an excuse not to show up to tryouts any more. I never even gave myself a chance to make the team. Later, in high school, I again had a chance to try out for a team. Things were different. I was now six feet tall and could jump above the rim. I had real skills. I showed up twice and again convinced myself I was not as good as the other kids on the court.
How did this happen?
My story isn’t unique. The Goliaths always seem impossible to beat until someone does. Most industries have at least 100 companies trying to beat their Goliath, but only one or two ever do. What do they do differently from all the others trying to bring the giant down?
I spent years haunted by that question. Despite never making a school sports team, I still wanted to be an athlete. For years I played intramural leagues and was always one of the better players. For a while, I was convinced that I was the problem: that I wasn’t smart enough, fast enough, resilient enough, strong enough—you name it, I thought it. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I discovered an important truth: my problem was my mindset, not my abilities.
The best-selling authors of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works would agree. Written by A.G Lafley, the former CEO of Procter and Gamble, and Roger Martin, the dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the book’s main concept is simple: strategy is about winning, and winning is about making choices on how and where to play. They pull on years of professional experience as top managers as they set out to demystify strategy and to coach managers on bringing a discipline of strategic thinking and strategic practice alive within an organization.
Their view is that there are three motivational categories into which every person and organization can be grouped: those that are completely checked out, prevention-focused, and promotion-focused.
Playing to Participate
Playing to participate describes a company or an individual that has completely checked out. They’ve decided that participation is the greatest accomplishment they can achieve. Winning is not even on their radar. They’ve given up before the starting buzzer. They lose every time.
Playing Not to Lose
This mindset is prevention-focused. Prevention-focused people and companies are vigilant and play to not lose. They see their goals as responsibilities and concentrate on staying safe. They worry about what might go wrong if they don’t work hard enough or aren’t careful enough. They hang on to what they have, to maintain the status quo. These companies are often risk-averse and fail to make the tough choices and significant investments that would make winning even a remote possibility.
Playing to Win
Promotion-focused people and companies see their goals as creating a path to gain or advancement and concentrate on the final reward that accompanies achieving them. They are eager, and they play to win. Promotion-focused people and companies are comfortable taking chances, like to work quickly, dream big, and think creatively. They’ll do whatever it takes to achieve their ambitious goals.
I’ve used the authors’ framework for strategy, and it is simple, yet powerful. Your strategy is defined by your answers to five closely interrelated questions that cascade down from the top and filter up to refine and reinforce the choices above. In general, there are fewer choice cascades for smaller companies (in fact there may only be one), whereas in larger organizations there may be sub-levels of choices.
1. What is your winning aspiration?
This is the most important—yet broadest—question you must first ask yourself. Your aspiration states why you exist, what you seek to be, and what winning looks like for you. It will allow you to recognize whether you are playing to win or just playing not to lose, and lead you to define what winning looks like at various levels.
2. Where will you play?
The question of where you will play is the first of the key questions that forces you to refine your strategy. Choosing the industry is like finding the right playing field. You’ll never win a football game on a squash court. Your team will never win the NBA finals if you’re enrolled in a high school league. If you try to play in every field concurrently, you’ll end up underperforming and failing in all sectors. To achieve your winning aspiration, you need to decide where to compete, and where not to compete. You can go for a narrow or broad choice, but you must choose.
3. How will you win?
Once you’ve chosen where to play and defined what winning means, you need to define how to win in the space you selected. You’ve probably already discussed the strengths, model, and value proposition you need to develop to gain a competitive advantage in your industry. Refine these now that you’ve stepped back and asked the big questions that ensure you’ve placed your organization in the right field. There are heaps of strategies available for you to choose. Broadly, you can go for a price- or product-differentiation strategy, or any combination of the two, if that’s what you need to win in your playing field.
4. What capabilities must be in place?
Your core capabilities are the entire set of activities that jointly allow you to implement your where-to-play and how-to-win strategic choices. An activity system is a visual representation of these capabilities. A small business may have one activity system for the whole company, while a large corporation will have different activity systems for each business unit.
5. What management systems are required?
Having a sound strategy isn’t enough. At the end of the day, it takes thoughtful and directed manpower to put your winning strategy into place. To win, your organization needs supporting systems and structures for your employees to do their jobs effectively, as well as key performance indicators that tell you how well you’re delivering on your strategic choices.
I realized after reading this book that I never made a team because I was playing to participate instead of playing to win. What was most transformative was realizing that I’d I spent the first quarter of my life falling short of my goals and letting others take the prizes I pined for because I was playing not to lose. Total paradigm shift!
So I ask you this: Are you going to be one of the hundreds of Davids that fail to take down Goliath? Or are you playing to win?
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