If you are not taking score you are just PRACTICING. Life is a fight for territory. Playing the game of life to just play is meaningless, playing to win is intentional. It requires thinking, planning, preparing, and taking massive action. It starts with a strategy. Deciding what winning looks like for you in all facets of your life. What is winning? Is it earning a certain amount of income? Is it spending quality time with family and friends? Is it driving a certain type of car or living in a certain size house? Is it being able to travel the world? Is it having financial freedom? Reasons reap results. What is your “why’ behind everything you do? What will push you to take consistent and strategic action daily?
Being a retired athlete, you ultimately learn that winning is the only option. Your conditioned to compete and to leave it all on the table every time you show up. I have learned winning in anything in life starts with EFFORT, by doing the work. When you implement strategy behind effort and work ethic, more opportunity arises. Robin Sharma is coined for saying,“what you do daily is your life in miniature.” When you discover your why, you will find the WAY. Strategy is a choice. The purpose of systems is to ensure consistency. In the book, “Playing to win, how strategy works”, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, explains how strategy is one of the major keys to consistently winning in business.
Lafely and Martin go over five questions to help you build a strategic business plan.
- What is your winning aspiration? What is the purpose of your company?
- Where will you play? Partnerships? Online? Brick and Mortar? Territories? Target audience?
- How will you win? How will you win on your chosen playing field?
- What capabilities must be in place? Who will you need? Who will you have to become? What will you need to learn?
- What management systems are required? What type of system do you need to create consistent results?
Here’s some key takeaways from the book, Playing to win, that can help grow your business:
-Do not try to capture all segments.
-Look for a place to play that will enable you to attack from unexpected directions.
-Winning means providing a better consumer and customer value equation than your competitors do and providing it on a sustainable basis.
-Differentiation. We offer products or services that are perceived to be distinctively more valuable to customers, with the same cost structure that competitors use.
-Measurement provides focus and feedback.
Strategy is a way to win. Having a competitive advantage helps you create consistent success. Playing to win in anything, means being more intentional, goal oriented, focus, strategic, mission and purpose driven. See strategy as a process rather than a result. Remember success has no FINISH LINE.
Quote of the Day: “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” -Arie de Geus