Operational Excellence Is Not Strategy
Running the core better, faster, cheaper, higher quality, is necessary, valuable, and not a strategy. Martin's argument: every competitor is optimising toward the same best practices.
Martin's argument: every competitor is optimising toward the same best practices. Convergent improvement produces an undifferentiated market where the only lever left is price. Operational excellence is, in his phrase, a plan that pays leaders to feel safe while the competitive ground shifts beneath them.
The distinction:
- Operational excellence raises the floor, see it as table stakes
- Strategy creates differentiated value, a How to Win a rival can't or won't match (The Cant-Wont Test)
The trap is seductive because improvement produces real, measurable gains, which mask strategic stagnation. Flat revenue with improving internal metrics is the classic signature.
Note the asymmetry: a broken operational floor makes strategy impossible (no Enabling Management Systems can carry the signal), but an excellent floor with no strategy is Playing to Play with better numbers. Floor first, then cascade, never floor instead of cascade.
Seam with the OKR system: this library distinguishes Operational Excellence OKRs (raise a team's floor) from Strategic Cross-functional OKRs (build the house). Martin's point stands: the first kind alone is playing to play with better numbers.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
Reading about method is not the same as running it. We install this system and build the capability that stays.
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