Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

5 essential questions to craft a winning strategy | Roger Martin (author, advisor, speaker)

July 25, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Roger Martin, former dean at Rotman School and author of Playing to Win, discusses strategy as an accessible skill for product managers, engineers, and others below the C-suite level. Drawing from decades consulting at firms like Procter & Gamble, he critiques common pitfalls in strategy education and practice, then outlines his "strategy choice cascade"—five interconnected questions to craft choices that compel customer action.

Why Strategy Is Hard

Strategy fails often because it demands integration: choices across aspirations, markets, and operations must reinforce each other, unlike simple decisions. Emotionally, it intimidates since it requires rejecting options and accepting accountability. Education worsens this—business schools emphasize the resource-based view (focusing on internal resources without guidance on where to apply them), while consulting firms have shifted to execution services. Companies rarely train lower-level staff, yet brand managers at places like P&G make pivotal strategic calls that determine success.

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What you'll learn

1 (02:24) **Why everyone needs strategy skills**
2 (07:01) **Why strategy is intellectually/emotionally hard + academia critique**
3 (17:32) **Defining strategy + intro to Choice Cascade**
4 (23:21) **Playing to win vs. play: spot signs + low-cost/differentiate routes**
5 (30:46) **How to win deeply: differentiation tactics + capabilities/moats**
6 (40:23) **FigJam hypothetical: full cascade walkthrough**
7 (66:02) **Innovator's dilemma: follow customer tide**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Roger Martin is one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and the author of Playing to Win, one of the most beloved books on strategy. He’s written extensively for the Harvard Business Review; consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including P&G, Lego, and Ford; and written 11 other books. In our conversation, we discuss:

• The five key questions you need to answer to develop an effective strategy

• Why most companies get strategy wrong

• How to avoid “playing to play” instead of playing to win

• Real-world strategy examples from Procter & Gamble, Southwest Airlines, Lego, and Figma

• How to think about differentiation vs. low cost

• Shortcomings of current strategy education

• Much more

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Correction: Roger pointed out that he made an error during our chat. When I asked him about Richard Rumelt (~16 mins), he thought I said Richard D'Aveni.

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-strategy-roger-martin

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Where to find Roger Martin:

• X: https://x.com/RogerLMartin

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-martin-9916911a9/

• Website: https://rogerlmartin.com/