Playing to Win
A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin · 2013
The playbook behind Procter & Gamble's turnaround. Lafley and Martin argue strategy isn't a vision or a plan but an integrated cascade of five hard choices that all add up to one thing: choosing to win, not merely to play.
A strategy book written by the people who actually ran an $80-billion company, turning abstract theory into five concrete questions any leader can answer.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of Playing to Win pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Strategy is not planning, vision, best practices, or optimizing the status quo. It is an integrated set of **five choices** that positions you to win: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems.
- The purpose of strategy is not to participate but to **win**. 'Playing to play' companies hedge, spread bets, and settle for staying alive; 'playing to win' companies define what a decisive victory looks like for a specific customer and go get it.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- Strategy Is Choice
- What Is Winning?
- Where to Play
- How to Win
- The Olay Story: Where and How, Together
- Capabilities That Make You Win
- Managing What Matters
- Thinking Through Strategy
- The Endless Pursuit of Winning
Finish Playing to Win tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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