Roger Martin is the author of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works along with A.G. Lafley
Roger Martin’s definition of strategy is: “strategy is choice”.
Martin says, “Strategy is not a long planning document; it is a set of interrelated and powerful choices that positions the organization to win.”
According to Martin and Lafley, There are five key choices in the Strategy Choice Cascade:
- What is our winning aspiration?
- Where will we play?
- How will we win where we have chosen to play?
- What capabilities must be in place to win?
- What management systems are required to ensure the capabilities are in place?”
“Making strategy choices is never easy because it means doing some things at the expense of others.” Over a 20 year period, Martin worked to develop a honing process that he calls the Strategic Choice Structuring process that helps managers work together to make powerful choices.
He says, “Armed with a definition of strategy as choice, the Strategy Choice Cascade and the Strategic Choice Structuring process, any manager in any organization can build powerful strategies.”
Roger Martin says the goal of his book is to make strategy “simple, fun, and effective.” He says strategy should never be more than 5 pages and usually should be able to be summarized to just one page!
Strategy is about choosing to do some things and not other things. Any company that tries to do everything is not going to go very far. What you have to do is pick some things in a way that will allow you to win. He says there are only five choices that any organization (nonprofit or for profit) has to choose from to have a great strategy.
Being better than every body else is not a strategy. Yet many companies simply want to be the best in the industry.