Mastering Strategic Growth: Where to Play and How to Win

In business, success depends on strategic decisions that drive growth and sustainability. This journey starts with:

• Understanding your unique strengths and competitive advantages.
• Defining where to focus your efforts.
• Deciding how to succeed in your chosen areas.

This blog post explores three key aspects of strategic growth:

1. Where to Play (WTP)
2. How to Win (HTW)
3. The critical importance of making clear WTP/HTW choices.

Where to Play (WTP): Setting the Stage for Success

Strategic growth begins with understanding your target audience and defining success for your business. Start by asking:

• "What is winning?"
  • Identify your most valuable customers.
  • Determine the business measures that create sustainable value for you and them.

This value exchange is the foundation of strategic decision-making.

The next step is "where to play."

• Just as a chess player chooses the best move, businesses must carefully select their playing field.
• Small businesses often excel here, leveraging close customer relationships for competitive advantage.
• Focus on:
  • Identifying your primary customer.
  • Exploring growth opportunities, like new customer segments or adapting to changing industries.

Example: A local bakery expands its menu to include gluten-free products, attracting health-conscious customers.

How to Win (HTW): Crafting a Winning Strategy

Once you've charted your playing field, the focus shifts to "how to win." Your strategy should reflect a keen understanding of user needs, competitive landscapes, and your own capabilities. This phase encompasses a deep dive into multiple dimensions:

• Geography: Where will you compete? Which regions or countries align with your strengths and customer base?
• Product Type: What products or services will you offer? How will they meet unfulfilled consumer needs?
• Consumer Segment: Who are your target consumers? What niches or price tiers will you serve?
• Distribution Channel: How will you reach your customers? Online platforms, social media, or traditional channels?
• Production Stage: Where will you engage along the value chain? Upstream with suppliers or downstream closer to customers?

But crafting a winning strategy requires more than just answers to these questions. It involves staying ahead of dangerous temptations, like:

• attempting to serve all segments simultaneously or
• making acquisition-driven leaps into attractive markets.

Instead, focus on discipline, avoiding resignation, and embracing change.

Example: A local bakery differentiating itself by sourcing organic ingredients and offering online ordering with home delivery.

Making Clear WTP/HTW Choices: The Essence of Strategy

Strategy is the result of clear choices. It involves:

• Selecting the right fields to compete in.
• Defining strategies to succeed in those fields.

Where to Play (WTP) and How to Win (HTW) are inseparable. Once your vision and objectives are clear, these choices guide your actions.

WTP/HTW choices lie at the heart of strategy creation:

• Choose markets, customers, products, and distribution channels that match your strengths and meet real consumer needs.
• Align goals with actions.
• Optimise resources for growth.

In today’s fast-changing business environment, strategic choices are more critical than ever.

• Define WTP/HTW choices to build a framework for growth and resilience.
• Focus is key, especially for small businesses.
  • Avoid trying to be everything to everyone.
  • Instead, choose battles wisely and execute with precision.

In summary: Strategic growth is a step-by-step process:

1. Understand the value you bring to customers.
2. Carefully decide where to play and how to win.
3. Make clear WTP/HTW choices that act as a guiding light.

In a world of constant change, these choices are your North Star. They will lead you to sustainable growth and success.

Credit: This article is inspired by ideas from A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin in their book, "Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works."

Implementing the Framework in StratNavApp.com

You can implement the entire Strategy Choice Cascade illustrated in the diagram above in StratNavApp.com as follows:

1. What is our winning aspiration?	Define your strategic mission and vision. Break it down into long-term strategic goals (using the Balanced Scorecard framework). Break each goal down into medium-term term objectives, and establish KPIs for these.
2. Where will we play?	Define your target customer segments and channels in the Business Model Canvas. Detail their jobs to be done using the Customer Value Map. Detail your products and services in the portfolio analysis module. Define your locations using the Enhanced Business Model Canvas. Understand the competitive attractiveness of your chosen markets using Porter's 5 Forces Analysis. Use the Ansoff Matrix to understand how the business can expand into new products/services and customer segments.
3. How will we win?	Establish your value proposition using the Business Model Canvas. Differentiate your business in the market using the Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas.
4. What capabilities must be in place?	Define your key capabilities in the Business Model Canvas and/or Value Chain (also known as core competencies). Be clear and evidence-based on your actual performance of those capabilities using the McKinsey 7-S or Strengths and Weaknesses on a SWOT analysis. Establish and manage the delivery of the strategic initiatives to create or acquire and maintain those capabilities.
5. What management systems are required?	Track the status of your strategic initiatives on the Initiative Status Report. Track the progress of your overall strategy using the Strategy Scorecard. Manage meetings to review your strategy and make decisions in the Meeting Manager. Evaluate strategic alternatives, and make and record decisions using the Strategy Alternative Matrix.

Common Pitfalls

Common pitfalls in business which this framework helps to prevent include:

1. Lack of leadership: failing to make and communicate clear choices, and then stick to them.
2. Lack of focus: trying to choose too many new things at once.
3. Overextending resources: making choices which are too far beyond the organisations capability to execute.
4. Misjudging market needs: failing to understand what the market really needs as opposed to what it says it needs or what you think it needs.
5. Lack of adaptability: an organisation needs a repeatable formula to be able to win consistently, but must also not be afraid to change it should the competitive landscape change.

Conclusion

As you consider your business's next move, ask yourself: Have we clearly defined our playing field? Do we have a winning strategy tailored to that arena? What steps can we take today to align our actions with our strategic choices? StratNavApp.com can help you to develop and execute a winning strategy. Why not try it right away?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)