Business strategy
Playing to Win
1 min read
Few collaborations have produced so much: A.
Affiliate CTA preview · enabled with monetization (phase 5).
The CEO who doubled Procter & Gamble's value and Toronto's business school dean turned their collaboration into the most operational strategy framework there is: five cascading choices — winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, and management systems — illustrated with the real decisions that transformed Olay and Gillette.
Our review
Few collaborations have produced so much: A. G. Lafley doubled Procter & Gamble's value in his first stint as CEO, and Roger Martin — Rotman's dean and his strategic advisor for years — theorized the method they used. «Playing to Win» condenses it into the cascade of five choices: what is our winning aspiration; where do we play (markets, segments, channels); how do we win there; what capabilities do we need; and what management systems make it sustainable. The book's strength is that every concept is illustrated with real P&G decisions — reinventing Olay as a prestige brand in the mass channel, the Gillette acquisition, opening innovation with Connect+Develop — told with their numbers and their doubts. Compared to the more intellectual Rumelt, Lafley and Martin are operational: their framework is built to be used on Monday morning, cascading from the corporation to every brand and function. Its limit is its origin: the method was born in consumer goods and demands adaptation outside it. As a bridge between strategic theory and executive practice, it remains unsurpassed.
Who it's for
For executives and brand or product leads who need an immediately applicable strategy framework; the ideal practical complement after reading Rumelt or Porter.
Key takeaways
- Strategy is five cascading choices: aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, and systems — each conditioning the next.
- «Where to play» and «how to win» are the heart: choosing battlefields and the form of advantage is what most plans dodge.
- A corporate strategy only works if it cascades: every brand, category, and function needs its own coherent five choices.
- Capabilities must derive from strategy, not the other way round: first decide how to win, then build what is needed to do it.
FactDuring Lafley's tenure as CEO (2000-2010), P&G doubled sales and multiplied profits; the Spanish edition was published by Arpa in 2020.
