Asking the Right Questions
In a recent webinar, “A Playbook for Winning,” tied to the book Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (Harvard,2013), Procter & Gamble chief executive A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, echo Porter’s assertion that strategy is about choices. Strategic decision-making, they argue, involves five key questions: What is our winning aspiration? Where will we play? How will we win? What capabilities must we have? What management systems are required?
“These are the same questions I would ask and they are applicable to any and all industries,” Green says. “Additional questions for produce companies might include: What market forces are at play with food and perceptions of health? How do we leverage those trends? Do we want to educate our market or follow the lead of someone else who does? Who are the key stakeholders in our industry that can most drive desired change for us?”
At Grant J. Hunt, “We generally ask ourselves about each of our business segments:‘if we weren’t already doing this function, would we want to start doing [it] to grow the business in the long run?’ If the answer is no,” Hunt explain “then that’s an area for acute analysis.”
Further, Hunts says, when considering a new commodity, there are a host of questions that must be asked and answered: “Who are the ultimate shoppers that will consume it? What will they be willing to pay? Who will be our customer base to take this commodity to market? Do we have access to that channel of distribution? It seems simple,” he says, “but our industry is littered with folks who planted crops or orchards because it was ‘perfect growing conditions’ without a thought in the world about who would buy that product or for how much money.”
Not everyone thinks Lafley and Martin’s five-step process applies well to produce. “I think Lafley is too focused on manufactured products and his comments do not fit the reality of the fresh produce industry, or perishables in general,” Athanassiadis says. “While it seems relatively straightforward for a produce company to develop a strategy from an intellectual perspective, it has been more difficult, many times, to implement it successfully.”
