Playing the Long Game: Implications for Managers

Abstract

We began this book by arguing that a major challenge facing executives is the avoidance of strategic drift. Businesses become so wedded to the distinctive capabilities that brought them success that they are either blinded to changes in their environment, with the result that their capabilities become outmoded and their strategy redundant; or, if they recognize the changes taking place, they dismiss them because they are so wedded to the strategy they are following. The ability of firms both to exploit the capabilities on which they have built success and to explore new bases of success seems rare. Our interest has been in such exceptional firms (our successful strategic transformers [SSTs]) that developed capabilities upon which they could make transformational changes while retaining high levels of performance. In this chapter, we turn our attention to the implications of our findings for managers and for management practice.