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I revisited my definition of strategy several years ago and realized recently that I hadnt written about it just presented it privately to executive teams in the context of my strategy work with them. I decided to rectify that oversight by writing this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece on it called Revisiting my Definition of Strategy: Compelling Desired Customer Action. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.Need for a DefinitionFor any field to develop, the terms used in the field must be defined. Otherwise, participants cant discuss the field intelligently, and it is therefore hard for the field to advance. I experienced that phenomenon when I joined the founding board of the Skoll Foundation in 1999 (on which I served for 20 years). Its stated purpose was to invest in, connect, and champion social entrepreneurs, which sounded great. At my first board meeting, when we were reviewing candidates to receive the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (which included $1M in funding for their organizations), I asked what I thought was an innocent question: OK, so what is a social entrepreneur?{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"","imageMobileUrl":"","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his weekly Medium posts at rogermartin.medium.com.","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogermartin.medium.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":0,"imageMobileId":0}}I was relatively taken aback by the multitude of answers I got. Generally, it boiled down to a vague notion of a person doing good for humanity in an entrepreneurial kind of way. I asked if Mother Theresa was a social entrepreneur. No. OK, how about Steve Jobs? No. How about Muhammad Yunus? Yes. In due course, I gave up and realized that we had a vague definition that provided little guidance as to what was in or out.I found the fuzziness unsatisfactory, so I worked hard with the brilliant founding Skoll CEO Sally Osberg to come up with a clear and actionable definition of social entrepreneurship to guide our field-building work. In due course, we wrote up our definition in a Stanford Social Innovation Review article called Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, which has gone on to be the most downloaded article in the history of that journal and the most cited article in social entrepreneurship. Its popularity demonstrated that people in the field needed a definition of the field to work productively in it.Need for a Strategy DefinitionDespite business strategy being a much older field than social entrepreneurship, it still suffers from a lack of consensus on a definition. I see every definition under the sun as I observe and practice strategy. The most common definition is a list of initiatives which the company plans to carry out and is called a strategic plan. I am not fond of that definition, as I explain in my viral video (with just under 6 million views), A Plan is Not a Strategy. Another definition is an adjective connoting importance. So, strategic sourcing is more important than sourcing. Strategic HR is more important than HR, and so on. Yet another common definition of strategy is a dream e.g., our strategy is to become the best life insurance company in the world.These, and many more definitions floating around out in the business world, are simply not helpful. A list of initiatives is just a list. An adjective is just a modifier of another word. And hope is, as my friend AG Lafley always says, is not a strategy. My Original DefinitionIn the mid-1990s, as I did a decade later with social entrepreneurship, I leaped into the breach to attempt to provide a useful definition that could guide the practice of strategy. I think I came up with my original defintion in 1995, but the earliest slide of mine that I could find with it is the one below from January 1998 (if you look at the lower-left footer). That served as my definition for a quarter-century.Funnily, I was prompted to look for the origin of this definition because I was recently asked to work alongside a consultant who parroted this exact, word-for-word definition of strategy in his presentation without citing me as the source. This kind of thing happens frequently, so I was not terribly surprised. And the beneficial outcome of his plagiarism is that it gave me the impetus to write this piece. In any event, there are five important elements of my original definition.First, it is made up of choices to do some things and not to do other things. You dont have a strategy if it doesnt identify what you are not going to do.Second, it is an integrated set. It is not a list. It is a set of choices that fit together and reinforce one another. At the same time as I was doing this work, I was helping Michael Porter with his landmark 1996 Harvard Business Review article, What is Strategy? It debuted the idea of the central importance of fit and reinforcement in strategy.Third, the set of choices positions the firm in its industry. This definition was designed to complement the five-question Strategy Choice Cascade, which I created contemporaneously, and this is a reference to the Where-to-Play choice.Fourth, the set of choices is designed to create sustainable advantage relative to competition, which is an obvious connection to the How-to-Win choice.Fifth is the payoff of doing the first four and that is superior financial returns, which are both the reward and the proof that choices accomplish the third and fourth elements.My New DefinitionI liked the definition a lot, which is why I kept using it for a quarter-century. But about three years ago, I started including a modified definition (shown at the head of the article) in the presentations I give to clients as I work them through exercises to create strategy.Elements KeptAs is clear, I kept the first two elements exactly as they were in the old definition. Nothing changed in my thinking. These are both critical to a useful definition of strategy and counter to the conventional practice of what most executives and consultants call strategy. These many years later, strategy is still primarily a disconnected list of initiatives called a strategic plan. That is why integrated set and choices are so very important and are still the opening elements of my definition.One aspect on which I have elaborated is the choice element. I have come up with what those working on strategy find to be a useful test for whether or not they have made a strategy choice. A strategy choice is one for which the opposite of the choice is not stupid on its face. For example, a choice to be customer-centric is not a strategy choice because the opposite ignoring your customers is stupid on its face and will result in abject failure. That doesnt mean such a choice is not important. In fact, if the opposite is stupid on its face, then it is what I call an operating imperative it is imperative that you make that choice. But choosing an operating imperative wont generate advantage because it is so obvious that every competitor should and will choose to do it too.Elements SubtractedI removed the other three elements of my old definition and replaced them with one new element. I didnt remove the third and fourth elements because I no longer believed they were relevant or appropriate. They Where-to-Play and How-to-Win are both still critical elements of strategy. But this definition is meant to accompany the Strategic Choice Cascade, and those specifics are covered precisely and thoroughly in it, so I dont need either here in this definition at least I dont think so. However, for any practitioner using this set of tools, I would encourage you to link this definition directly and explicitly to the Strategy Choice Cascade.I could have continued to include superior financial returns in the new definition. But I didnt because after using the original version for a long time, I wanted to simplify wherever possible. And it felt to me that this aspect is obvious. If a strategy produces crummy financial returns, it isnt a strategy worth having.Plus, the added element below incorporates this financial aspect implicitly.Element AddedOver the past decade or so, I have been thinking a lot about why I am so committed to strategy especially when so many others (e.g. them and her) downplay its importance or even relevance. Companies have gotten so big, so rich, cant they do anything they wish? What is wrong with just asking every business or function what it wants, assembling that list, then funding each initiative and calling that its strategy?But so many big companies fail! Nearly once every two years of the 140-year existence of the Dow Jones 30, one of these 30 corporate giants gets kicked out of the index because it has fallen on hard times. It became clear to me that while they are big and powerful, and control lots of things, they dont control everything.A company controls how many employees it hires, how much it pays them, how many factories/service operations it builds, how many dollars to spend on advertising, how much to invest in R&D, through which distribution channels to sell, and on and on. The lists of things companies control is exceedingly long.However, the one essential element over which the company has zero control is the customer. Customers can take whatever actions they please unless the organization is a regulated monopoly like the Department of Motor Vehicles, which customers are forced to use if they want to drive a car. Normal customers cant be forced to do anything. Companies cant impose decisions on them.Hence, the task of strategy is to make choices in areas under the control of the company that together compel desired customer action. Generically, the desired action is for customers to buy enough of the companys offering at sufficiently high prices to earn attractive returns over the short and long term. If many buy but are willing only at too low a price, that does not amount to desired customer action. If customers instead buy at the target price but there are too few of them, that is also a failed strategy. Quantity and price are both necessary aspects of customer action.Happily, since I am a Peter Drucker fan, this view of strategy is consistent with his view of the purpose of business which is to create and keep a customer. (It is not completely clear that he actually included the and keep part of that definition, but I think it is logically implied). I see the purpose of the strategy that guides a companys action is to compel potential customers to become customers at prices and volumes that make the economics attractive.Practitioner InsightsA big enemy of strategy is fuzzy definitions that make the job of creating effective strategy harder than it really needs to be. Strategy cant be anything you want it to be. You need to embrace and enforce a tight definition to assist you in creating a valuable strategy.My latest and tightest definition has three elements: choices, integrated set, and desired customer action. An essential feature of the choices is that the opposite of each choice is not stupid on its face. It is an integrated set if the choices across the five questions of the Strategy Choice Cascade fit with and reinforce one another. And the choices must be configured to compel the thing the company does not control, which is desired customer action.If you ensure that you are guided by those three elements of a tight definition, you will be able to create productive, winning strategies.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated and expanded a food safety alert regarding possible Listeria contamination in several prepared pasta meal products. The extent of the outbreak is now known to have occurred in at least 15 states and has unfortunately resulted in multiple deaths. Heres what you need to know. Whats happened? On Friday, the CDC issued a new alert along with an expanded list of prepared pasta meal products that may be contaminated with Listeria, a potentially deadly bacterium. According to an accompanying CDC tracking page, there have now been 20 cases of Listeria believed to be related to the outbreak. The first reported case happened back in August of 2024. An additional four cases, for a total of five for the year, were reported by that December. But in 2025, the number of cases for the year has so far tripled to 15, bringing the total number of those who have gotten sick from this outbreak to 20. The most recent confirmed sickness from the outbreak occurred on September 11. Of the 20 cases, the CDC says that 19 have resulted in hospitalizations. Unfortunately, four individuals have died due to consuming food linked to this outbreak. What products are included in the outbreak? A number of products have been associated with the Listeria outbreak. These products have been reported by both the CDC and the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). September 26: The CDC said the following product has been added: FreshRealm held beef meatball marinara linguine meals” September 25: An FSIS notice said the following products were included: Marketside Linguine With Beef Meatballs & Marinara Sauce Trader Joes Cajun Style Blackened Chicken Breast Fettucine Alfredo June 2025: An FSIS notice said other ready-to-eat pasta meals were believed to be possibly contaminated with Listeria. Those included: Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo With Fettuccine Tender Pasta With Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken and Shaved Parmesan Cheese Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo With Fettuccine Tender Pasta With Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken, Broccoli and Shaved Parmesan Cheese” Home Chef Heat & Eat Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo with Pasta, Grilled White Meat Chicken, and Parmesan Cheese All the products listed above have various sell-by dates and other marks listed in the notices that can help determine if the product in possession is one covered under a recall or alert. Where were the products sold? The products listed above were sold at various stores nationwide. Depending on the product, it could have been sold at: Kroger Walmart Trader Joes Some of the products may have expiration dates that have already passed, and may also no longer be on sale, yet they could remain in a persons refrigerator. Where is the outbreak located? This Listeria outbreak has now spread to 15 states: California: 2 cases Florida: 1 case Illinois: 1 case Indiana: 1 case Louisiana: 2 cases Michigan: 2 cases Minnesota: 1 case Missouri: 1 case Nevada: 1 case North Carolina: 1 case Ohio: 1 case South Carolina: 1 case Texas: 3 cases Utah: 1 case Virginia: 1 case However, the CDC stresses that these are only the known cases and likely to not represent the full extent of the outbreak. This outbreak may not have been limited to the states with known illnesses, and the true number of sick people is likely higher than the number reported, the agency noted. What is Listeria and what are its symptoms? Listeria is a bacterium that can cause serious illness in individuals, according to the CDC. The agency says that about 1,250 people are infected with Listeria in America each year. Of those cases, about 172 die. Anyone can contract a Listeria infection, but the infection is particularly harmful for pregnant women, newborns, people with weakened immune systems, and those aged 65 or older. Symptoms of a Listeria infection can differ depending on whether an individual is pregnant or not and whether the illness is invasive (has spread to other body parts beyond the intestines) or not, according to the CDC. In pregnant individuals, invasive symptoms include fever and flu-like symptoms. In other individuals, invasive illness symptoms include the above plus headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and seizures. Intestinal illness can include symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting. What should I do if I have the products included in the outbreak? You should not eat the affected food. The FSIS says the products should instead be thrown away or returned to their place of purchase. The CDC also has instructions on how to clean your refrigerator if it contains recalled food. Full details about the outbreak and the recalls can be found on the CDCs notices here and here and the FSISs notices here and here.
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E-Commerce
A few years back, Deanna Conley had just moved to Newport, Rhode Island with a 3-month-old and 3-year-old. She soon joined a focus group for a new type of club forming in her area. This clubpart daycare, part adult coworking space, and a little bit gymwould fulfill Conleys post-moving needs: It offered community in a town where she knew no one, a space to work as a small business owner without an office, and affordable childcare. The cost of a nanny was really prohibitive for us, Conley says. Her older son had been in traditional daycare prior to the familys move, but Conley thought this club might be a bit different. I was really interested in and excited about this new idea of whole family care, she says, versus just childcare. The club eventually became a daycare-gym-coworking hybrid workspace called Haven. It opened in Newport in 2019, and has since opened another location in Rhode Island and one in New Jersey. In January, Haven announced its franchising throughout the U.S. It, and other companies like it, may change how parents juggle work and kids. Per the Economic Policy Institute, childcare for one infant in the U.S. costs more than public college tuition in 38 states. That, plus the reality that many people work remotely, makes the idea of a space that mixes childcare, coworking, and fitness needs appealing to parents. Thats especially true in a world where more remote work means people are parenting more in bubbles than in villages. While gyms such as the YMCA and Minnesota-based fitness chain Life Time provide childcare, typically they cap care at a couple hoursperfect for a workout, not so great for work. Haven offers a village for the price of daycarewith coworking and fitness opportunities thrown in. We can’t fix the high cost of childcare, says Haven founder and CEO Britt Riley, acknowledging that early childhood educators deserve their pay. But we can provide as much more value as we can. She wants to keep you in the workforce, help you feel close to your kids, [and] decrease your mom guilt. Reports found that in 2023, just 15.8% of business with 1,000 or more employees offer on-site childcare, while just 7.6% of medium-sized business do. Other spaces that combine daycare and coworking exist in the U.S. and abroad, but Haven, with several hundred members across its clubs, remains unique as a fully licensed childcare facility (for ages zero to five), meaning parents can leave the building without their children, thats begun franchising. (Other coworking spaces with childcare avoid the time-consuming licensing process because parents remain on-site with their kids.) Very much what young parents need In todays professional landscape, remote work has grown arguably more common than affordable childcare. Haven was born out of a need, says Riley, whod been looking for childcare for her 1-year-old and infant but couldnt find anything she felt comfortable with that wasnt too high cost. I got stuck on this idea that there was something else we could do. Having worked in marketing at companies like Patagonia, Riley used her business acumen to attract investors, raising just under $20 million. She recently tapped a former Patagonia colleague to head Havens franchising efforts. Though Riley says regulations for childcare licensing are extremely stringent to ensure childrens safety, she prioritized giving members the ability to take meetings elsewhere (think coffee shops or clients offices) while their children stay at Haven. Notably, Riley refers to Haven as a club (where membership costs between $650 and $2,500 a month) rather than a daycare/coworking space. The coworking space is just an amenity thats there for the parents, she says. Club offered a way to describe a community, Riley adds, where parents can look out the window mid-workday and see their kids playing outside, or pop into a dark room for a massage after meeting with an on-site personal trainer. Back in Rhode Island, self-employed business owner Conley has also relied on Haven for date nights. Her local Haven has hosted evenings in which members pajama-clad kids can eat, do crafts, and watch a movie while their parents go out for dinner. It felt to me very much what young parents need, Conley says. Rethinking the quick drop-off model Havens clientele includes military families, full-time remote workers, gig workers, self-employed people, and even parents who work at offices. Riley says those clients use the facility for a quick workout before bringing their kids home. Havent isnt the only coworking-slash-daycare in the game. MOMentum in suburban Pennsylvania caters to similar clientele. (Despite its name, dads account for about one-third of those working at MOMentums converted church building facility.) Like Haven, MOMentum grew from a need. Cofounder Mary Beth Thomas says the after school childcare program at her kids school was a mandatory paid five days, when she needed fewer. She was also looking for an alternative to the quick drop-off model in the morning: We want our kids to get used to the fact that their parents are nearby and they’re going to peek in on them, and its not something that causes anxiety, Thomas says. It’s more of a comfort. At MOMentum, which costs between $1,520 and $1,690 per month for full-week attendance, parents can join their kids for a music class, or eat lunch with them. MOMentum has just one location that offers childcare and coworking, and though Thomas has gotten inquiries about franchising, she prefers to keep the business local. We’re more grassroots, she says. We want other people to come up with something that meets the needs of their community, she says, and not something just cloning MOMentum. When Lauren Perrett opened BubbaDesk in November 2022 in Australia, she says there were no similar offerings. Coworking and childcare were seen as completely separate categories, she says. Instead of trying to compete with daycare, Perrett adds, her company pursued a new category that she calls close-proximity care integrated with coworking. BubbaDesks individual subscription membership costs up to $175 AUD ($115 USD) a day, and businesses like Canva and a large Australian bank have purchased memberships for their employees. (Haven offers corporate packages, too.) A spreading model While BubbaDesks model resembles Havens more closely than MOMentums, with eight locations across Australia, Perrett is concerned that franchising could compromise its standards, which are so important when it comes to keeping children safe and cared for. Quality, safety, and culture are nonnegotiable, and the integrated nature of our spaces makes centralized training and oversight essential, she says. To ensure Haven preserves its culture and safety standards, Riley speaks with all serious owner candidates personally. As much as she wants Haven availability to spread, shes looking to keep the ecosystem cohesive, with a 2-by-3-foot poster proclaiming its values at each club. She calls the model, per the poster, a blend of a wise mentor, a compassionate friend, your most supportive and loving family member. Haven started awarding franchises in the second quarter of 2025. Riley wont say how many have been awarded so far, but they go as far west as Illinois, with most in New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Even people in countries known for their progressive childcare policies, like in Scandinavia, have asked about opening Haven locations. For now, Riley envisions parents one day being able to travel with their children and work from Havens around the world. It’s such a beneficial way of looking at childcare as whole family care, says Conley. Rather than parents in this rat race, trying to figure out schedules and hours and payments.
Category:
E-Commerce
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