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

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
Why are so many people bad at strategy?

**Roger Martin** (0:02)
What's taught now in business schools generally sucks. People aren't prepared educationally, and they sure don't get prepared for it in companies. It's intellectually challenging, and it's emotionally intimidating.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:15)
You have something you call the strategy choice cascade.

**Roger Martin** (0:18)
You have to have answers to five questions. What's your winning aspiration? Where to play? How can you win? What capabilities do you have to have that your competitors don't? And then what enabling management systems you have to put in place? For the most part, in the leading business schools, it's illegal to teach that.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:35)
Playing to Win, you talked about, there's kind of these two routes.

**Roger Martin** (0:37)
You have to be either differentiated or low cost. There's no way to protect yourself if you're not one of those two.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:43)
Is there anything else you wanted to just leave listeners with?

**Roger Martin** (0:45)
I have never met this mythical beast called a great natural strategist. Great strategists have all one thing in common. They just practice.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:59)
Today, my guest is Roger Martin. Roger is one of the world's most trusted strategy advisors. He's Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, where he served as Dean for five years. In 2013, he was named Global Dean of the Year. And in 2017, he was named the world's number one management thinker by Thinkers 50 He's also the author of what many listeners consider their favorite book on strategy called Playing to Win. I've gotten a lot of requests to get Roger on this podcast and I can now see why.
This is the most tactical and fascinating conversation I've had on this podcast about developing a strategy. And that is a really high bar. We delve into the five questions that you need to answer to help you craft your strategy. How Hamilton Helmer, Michael Porter and Richard Rumelt's work fits in to his framework and worldview. What people most often get wrong when they're developing their own strategy. The two options you have for how to win with your strategy. A very tactical and simple trick for getting started thinking through your strategy. And so much more. This episode is for anyone who is trying to build their strategic thinking muscle. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you Roger Martin.
Roger, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

**Roger Martin** (2:24)
It's great to be here Lenny, thanks for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:27)
What I want to try to do with our time together is to help people that are on the ground at a company, say like the product manager, designer, engineer, data scientist, folks that aren't necessarily the CEO or the founder or executive company, get better at product strategy, at crafting a strategy, evaluating a strategy, developing a strategy, because it feels like there's always tons of advice for like the leaders of a company, but less for people on the ground doing the thing. And I feel like, luckily your stuff applies to everyone.
So how does that sound as a lens for...

**Roger Martin** (2:54)
That sounds great. And can I tell us a little story to that end?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:58)
Please.

**Roger Martin** (2:58)
So recently there was a newspaper article saying that, pointing out that 10% of the S&P 500 CEOs, 10% are ex-Procter & Gamble people.
It's an amazing number, like a stunningly high number. Why would that possibly be? I believe it's because at Procter & Gamble, there is a view that people way down the organization, like let's just say the head and shoulders brand franchise leader, right? Who reports to the head of shampoos and conditioners, who reports to the head of beauty care, who reports to the CEO. So at least four levels down in the organization and the guts of the organization, Procter understands that that individual, not the CEO, not the global president of beauty care, not the head of hair care, not the head of shampoos and conditioners, the brand manager makes super important strategic choices and if they don't make them well, the brand does terribly.
And so, I believe and not many companies have enough of that attitude. So I'm a big believer that people down organization have to make really important strategic choices or bad things are gonna happen. If they make really great ones, good things are gonna happen and they get trained to be a CEO someday. So I'm with your thesis, but yours is counter what I would say is normal. What is most normal is people at the top do strategy and people down below do something and it's usually called execution. And I hate that term of art for what it's worth. And so I think you and I are singing from a bit of the same songbook, even if it's a minority songbook.