Business leaders have a big problem. As A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin write in Playing To Win: “Far too few companies have a clear, choiceful and compelling winning strategy in place.”
Worse, executives who do come up with a successful approach often become trapped. To quote from Strategic Transformation: “What was previously a source of strength becomes the opposite – the invisible bars of a prison from which it is very hard to escape.”
Assessing the options can be “overwhelming, even paralysing”, Lafley and Martin write. A surfeit of guides to the topic risks adding to the indecision. But these two, quite different, new books are an excellent starting point.