Putsis - Compete smarter, not harder: a process for developing the right priorities through strategic thinking

Praise for Compete Smarter, Not Harder

In today's technology-driven, readyfireaim business environment, competitive strategy is all too often left behind by the push to deliver the next shiny thing. Real competitive strategy is about prioritization; most important, prioritization that wins for customers, thereby winning for the business. Compete Smarter, Not Harder is on target with its simple steps to ensure the business prioritizes its efforts in an effective, efficient manner, and most important, excludes those things that are not within the strategy and only distract or divert the business. This book does a great job illustrating the importance of knowing where and how to compete. Bill's stories resonate and clearly illustrate those business principles that define success while pointing out the fallacies that are often employed as fact when making business decisions. Make this book part of your business education and keep it in your reference library.

Greg Bowlin,
Strategia Global, LLC., and formerSenior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Jeppesen, Inc.

This book delivers high-quality service to both scholars and practitioners. From a research perspective, it demonstrates step-by-step analysis of how to make strategic decisions on where or where not to compete in such a rapidly changing market as today, based on the process of screening for priorities. Meanwhile, it also provides specific solutions for a practitioner like me when it comes to making real and critical decisions.

Some traditional books about marketing or strategy are highly focused on one or few specific regions or customers. However, this book seeks for a universal solution by drilling into the core of competing in the right market, in the right part, for the right customers, with the right incentives, and with the right offering. Therefore, the principles and tools can be utilized worldwide without boundaries, in the United States, China, and anywhere else.

The thought-provoking principles and tools is not elaborated in a traditional way. It is quite impressive that the book is filled with vivid examples and logical statements. The examples cover from literature, relevant theories, to the business world.

Making strategic decisions sometimes is so critical and highly related to the fortune of the entire organization. The book would enrich practitioners' minds by making important contribution to their understanding about what to focus and hence the quality of strategy decisions.

Kehai Xie,
Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Peking University Founder Group Co., Ltd.

Cover design: Paul McCarthy

Copyright 2014 by Dr. William Putsis. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Putsis, William, 1959

Compete smarter, not harder : a process for developing the right priorities through strategic thinking/Dr. William Putsis.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-70871-2 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-74702-5 (ebk): ISBN 978-1-118-74716-2 (ebk)

1. Strategic planning. 2. Target marketing. 3. MarketingManagement. I. Title.

HD30.28.P8678 2013

658.802dc23

2013016302

Priority

noun (pl. priorities)
a thing that is regarded as more important than another.

Introduction

Priority

The art of the wise is knowing what to overlook

William Blake

I know you recognize the following story. The names and situation may be different, but the story is the same, for it plays out all the time inside of companies around the globe:

We've all lived these conversations. Who usually wins? The person who wins is typically the one with the highest position on the org chart, the one who controls the budget, or who talks the loudest. But who should win? The one who's right.

Today more than ever, companies need to make choices about allocating scarce resources. Not only must they decide in what part of the market they should compete, but they must also adopt the right tactics for the part of the market in which they are competing. Moreover, just as important is the need to determine where not to compete. Doing precisely thissetting the right priorities at every stage of the process, from the 30,000-foot view of strategic vision to the detailed in the weeds tactics on the groundis what good companies do at every step. How to set priorities at every decision point is what this book is about.

To illustrate, think for a moment about the obsolescence of mobile phones. That is: what if we didn't need phones anymore? We wouldn't have to worry about losing them, where they are, or if they'll ring at some inopportune timebecause we'd be wearing them. Google's Project Glass aims to do just this. Google has developed glasses (really just one lens and hence the singular Project Glass )which, at some point in the not-so-distant future, could easily morph into contact lenses or an item of clothingthat provide a heads-up display with all kinds of information projected onto the glass. They'll give users a weather forecast for the day, provide the optimal route for getting to your destination, keep your calendar appointments, video conference you into the person calling you, or broadcast what you are seeing to others ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4 ).