In one line: Skip the hundred-page plan. Understand the competitive landscape through five blunt questions, find one big insight, then put the right people on it and execute while you keep learning.
Core idea
Jack and Suzy Welch [1] push back against strategy as a slow, academic exercise. In their view, strategy is a live competitive game, and their summary of it is blunt: “You pick a general direction and implement like hell” [1]. The goal of the analysis is one “big a-ha”, a realistic and fairly fast route to a lasting competitive advantage. They propose five questions to find it, debated in ongoing discussions rather than as a one-time study.
How it works
- The landscape now. Who are the competitors, big and small? What share does each have, and how strong are their products, R&D, sales forces and cultures? Which customers matter most, and how do they make buying decisions?
- The competition’s recent moves. What has each rival changed in the past twelve months, such as products, technologies or channels, and who is new to the market?
- Your own recent moves. What have we changed over the same period, and which advantages have slipped away?
- What’s coming. Which one or two competitor moves over the coming year would hurt us most? Are we at risk of losing our best people?
- Your winning move. Which move would shift the field in our favor, and what would make customers more loyal to us than to any rival?
Then come two steps that are about people:
- Staff the strategy. Match people’s skills to the work the insight demands, and give the strongest people the most important roles.
- Build a learning culture. Keep searching for best practices, inside and outside the company, and improving on them. Without that, any advantage fades.
In practice
The five questions fit on a whiteboard, so a project or product team can use them, not just executives. They also complement the heavier tools in this domain. Porter’s Five Forces explains the structure of an industry. Robert’s driving force explains what the company is. The Welches’ questions keep attention on what is changing this year. Answering question 3 honestly is often the hardest part: teams tend to remember the advantages they built and forget the ones they lost.
Questions to ask yourself
- What did our strongest competitor do last year that changed our market, and how did we respond?
- What advantage have we quietly lost?
- What one or two moves by a competitor would worry me most next year?
Connections
- Deeper frameworks: Business Strategy, Porter’s Five Forces. Where to find the facts: Reading an Annual Report.
- The same questions about yourself: Personal SWOT. People side: High-Performing Teams.
- Capabilities exercised: Vision, Inquiry, Initiative.