Same Ingredients, Different Cake: Why Best Practices Aren't Strategy

Two businesses can use exactly the same ingredients and still bake very different cakes. In this episode, Charleen Broad explains Roger Martin’s “opposite test,” a simple question that shows whether what you’re calling your strategy is actually a strategy or just good business. Using the picture of a cake, two investment companies and two New Brunswick heat pump installers, she shows the difference between best practices that every organization needs and the strategic choices that make the right people choose you. Try this week: the opposite test . Write down the statements you call your strategy, then write the opposite of each one. If no sensible organization would choose the opposite, move that statement to your list of ingredients. What’s left is where your real strategic work begins. https://broadstrategy.ca Sources: Lafley, A. G., & Martin, R. L. (2013). Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. Harvard Business Review Press. Martin, R. (2015). Roger Martin’s unconventional wisdom. The Bridgespan Group. https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/roger-martin-unconventional-wisdom