Playing to Win: How customer insight and foresight guide strategic choices?

Playing to Win: How strategy really works was published 13 years ago. Even so, it’s still one of the most widely used strategy frameworks today. The book was written by A. G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin and is largely based on Lafley’s tenure as CEO of Procter and Gamble, Martin’s strategic thinking, and Porter’s competitive theory.

One reason for the popularity of Playing to Win is its simplicity. By focusing on five key decision areas, the framework covers the most critical choices a company must make in order to succeed.

1. What is our winning aspiration or purpose?
2. Where will we play: who are our customers, which markets do we operate in, and which products and services do we offer?
3. How will we win: what is our value proposition and our unique selling point?
4. How do our capabilities support these choices, and how do we develop our skills, processes, systems and culture?
5. How do we lead the organisation towards our strategic objectives?

All strategic choices start with customer insight

To define a winning aspiration and playing field, it is first essential to understand current customers.

• What kind of value do we create for our customers today?
• What needs, pain points and aspirations do our customers have, and how should we develop our services to respond to them?
• Which customer segments generate revenue, and which segments are more profitable?
• Who is our primary customer?

Customer insight is typically gathered through in depth interviews with existing customers. It is important to select the right interviewees and to ensure the study includes a representative group from the relevant segments. A company representative who works with the customer in daily operations should not be present in the interview. This helps ensure customers feel able to share critical feedback openly.

If the customer base is large in volume, as is often the case in consumer business, qualitative insights can be validated through quantitative research, such as surveys.

Foresight is essential for growth in a constantly changing operating environment

In today’s rapidly changing operating environment, understanding only the needs of current customers is not enough. Foresight helps organisations explore not only the future operating environment of their own business, but also the evolving needs of their customers. Especially in B2B, it is important to consider how the operating environment and business of the customer’s customers will change.

Foresight can be leveraged in strategy work by:

• Mapping megatrends, trends and weak signals and assessing their impact on the operating environment, the business and new opportunities.
• Creating scenarios, alternative futures, and envisioning what successful business would look like in each of them.
• Conducting customer foresightto understand customers’ future needs.
• Building strategic choices in a way that steers the company, and potentially the operating environment, towards a desired future.