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Leonard Sherman - If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth

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Leonard Sherman If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth
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If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth: summary, description and annotation

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Businesses often find themselves trapped in a competitive dogfight, scratching and clawing for market share with products consumers view as largely undifferentiated. Conventional wisdom suggests that dogfights are to be expected as marketplaces mature, giving rise to the notion that there are bad industries where it is unlikely that any company can succeed.

But there are notable exceptions in which enlightened executives have changed the rules to grasp the holy grail of business: long-term profitable growth. Rather than joining the dogfights raging within their industry, companies such as Apple, FedEx, and Starbucks have chosen to become metaphorical cats, continuously renewing their distinctive strategies to compete on their own terms.

In If Youre in a Dogfight, Become a Cat, Leonard Sherman draws on four decades of experience in management consulting, venture capital, and teaching business strategy at Columbia Business School to share practical advice on two of the most vexing issues facing business executives: why is it so hard to achieve long-term profitable growth, and what can companies do to break away from the pack?

Sherman takes the reader on a provocative journey through the building blocks of business strategy by challenging conventional wisdom on a number of questions that will redefine management best practices:

What should be the overarching purpose of your business? Do you really know what your strategy is? Is there such a thing as a bad industry? Where do great ideas come from and how do I find them? What makes products meaningfully different? What makes and breaks great brands? How and when should I disrupt my own company? What are the imperatives to achieving long-term profitable growth?

Filled with dozens of illustrative examples of inspiring successes and dispiriting falls from grace, this book provides deep insights on how to become the cat in a dogfight, whether you are a CEO, mid-level manager, aspiring business school student, or curious observer interested in achieving sustained profitable growth.

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Leonard Sherman - If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth
If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth
Leonard Sherman
If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth

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Table of Contents
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester West - photo 1
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester West - photo 2
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-54282-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sherman, Len, 1956- author.
Title: If youre in a dogfight, become a cat! : strategies for long-term growth / Leonard Sherman.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021876 | ISBN 9780231174824 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Strategic planning. | Industrial management.
Classification: LCC HD30.28 .S42995 2016 | DDC 658.4/012dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021876
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .
COVER DESIGN: Faceout Studio

For Shelly, who has contributed to this endeavor more than she can ever know.

Contents
PRIOR TO JOINING the faculty of Columbia Business School, I spent more than three decades in management consulting, providing advice on business strategy to senior executives in the automotive, aerospace, and other industries around the world. I also served as a general partner in a corporate venture capital fund and as an investor and board member for a variety of high-tech startups.
My thinking over this time was shaped by a number of emerging theories of business strategy, from Porters Five Forces and the Boston Consulting Groups growthshare matrix at the beginning of my career, to disruptive technology frameworks in the middle, to new ideas on big-bang disruption and the death of competitive advantage at the end. At each step along the way I approached my consulting assignments and venture capital investment opportunities with messianic zeal, as consultants do, fully committed to the prevailing strategy theory that promised to help solve vexing client problems. I was as guilty as anyone of the old adage: if the only tool you have is a strategic hammer, you tend to see every client problem as a nail.
Looking back over my career, I am gratified to have actually changed the strategic direction of a few troubled clients, who went on to achieve great success. But if truth be known, most of my consulting engagements were less successful. For example, I worked on and off for over a decade for what was once the largest corporation in the world (General Motors), but couldnt alter their steadfast decline into bankruptcy. And at the turn of the new millennium, I enthusiastically recommended investments in promising start-ups, some of which did not survive the bursting of the dot-com bubble.
Along the way, it was easy to rationalize such disappointments by concluding that the client wouldnt accept my wise counsel or that they didnt properly execute the recommended strategy. But the passage of time has tempered my hubris and provided a broader perspective on the challenges of managing a complex business enterprise. Failure is a great teacher.
But perhaps Im being a bit too hard on myself. After all, being deeply immersed in the workings of business strategy over many decades, it has become increasingly apparent that most companies do not achieve and sustain long-term profitable growth, with or without the help of consultants.
A 2007 study by my former employer, Accenture, showed that only about 5 to 20 percent of companies, depending on industry, were able to consistently outperform competitors across business and economic cycles.
Bain consultants James Allen and Chris Zook examined the annual reports of the Forbes Global 2000 and found that on average, CEOs projected that their company would grow at twice the rate and be four times more profitable than the industry average. In other words, as Allen waggishly notes, the entire world of business is projecting to take share from the entire world of business. But after examining the performance of the Global 2000 over the decade 20012011, Bain found that only about 10 percent of companies actually met their growth targets.
And in perhaps the most extensive study of long-term growth rates, researchers at the Corporate Executive Board found that only 13 percent of Fortune 100 companies were able to sustain as little as 2 percent annual real revenue growth from one decade to the next over the past fifty years.
Many of my MBA students find these results surprising, and perhaps even a bit unsettling. After all, they have made a significant personal investment to learn the latest strategy theories, management best practices, and analytical frameworks that hold the promise of driving superior business performance. They have every reason to expect that they can beat the odds and achieve better outcomes over their careers.
I share their conviction and optimism, even after my own chastening experience in discovering that there are no silver bullets or universally applicable business-strategy frameworks or management best practices that ensure superior business performance. While I have been a beneficiary of the insightful strategy thinking contributed by Michael Porter, Bruce Henderson, Clay Christensen, C. K. Prahalad, Paul Nunes, Youngme Moon, Rita McGrath and others that will be reviewed in this book, I have also come to appreciate that effective business strategy is inherently dynamic and context sensitive. No one universal framework or management prescription fits all business circumstances. What works well for one company may actually be quite harmful if applied by another company operating in a different market and competitive environment. And what works well for a company at a given point in time may be counterproductive after its business circumstances change.
Thus the purpose of this book is to share practical advice in addressing two of the most common and vexing questions facing business executives:
Why is it so hard to achieve and sustain long-term profitable growth?
How can businesses achieve this?
Answering these questions has been the central focus of two popular MBA courses that I have been teaching at Columbia Business School for the past nine years. After making and observing innumerable mistakes over my own business career, I joined the ranks of academia with the intent of helping next-generation business leaders avoid common pitfalls and showing them how to lead better businesses. This book is similarly motivated, with the hope of reaching a wider audience beyond the cozy confines of Columbia Business School.
The curious title of this book metaphorically captures the competitive challenge eventually faced by all businesses, as well as the management mindset required to overcome the odds against sustained profitable growth. Consider the mental image conjured up by a dogfight, where rival dogs (firms) scratch and claw for territorial dominance (market share), often battling with largely similar tactics (products and services). In business terms, such conditions generally refer to mature, commoditized markets characterized by slow growth, slim margins, and intense competition, making it difficult for any one firm to effectively break away from the pack. In dogfights, as in business, strong players may gain a temporary advantage, but the ongoing fight for dominance usually takes a heavy toll on all combatants, and the prospect for renewed battles remains a constant threat.
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