Playing to Win, Expanded with Bonus HBR Articles: How Strategy Really Works

A Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. A playbook for creating your company's winning strategy. Now also includes two HBR articles by the authors.

Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It's hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future--something that doesn't happen in most companies.

In this contemporary business classic, now with a foreword from former Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius and new articles providing fresh insights, two of today's most respected business thinkers explain what strategy is for, how to think about it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.

The result is a playbook for winning. At its core is a set of five integrated and essential strategic choices:

• What is our winning aspiration?
• Where will we play?
• How will we win?
• What capabilities must we have in place to win?
• What management systems are required to support our choices?

The authors tell rich stories of iconic P&G brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, and more, to clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach--and then making the right choices to support it--makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.