Handy tips for managers
D.S. Cheema

Big Winners and Big Losers
by Alfred A. Marcus.
Wharton School Publishing.
Pages 396. Price not stated.

If history is any guide, it appears two subjects have churned out maximum printed pages, self-management and business management literature, in that order. The trend for business management books was started by In Search of Excellence published in 1982. Since then a revolution has been brewing. Managers in every field are rethinking the ‘tried and tested’ principles of management and finding new ways of how business entities can excel. Most of such books provide diagonally opposite recommendations, which are practically unviable. However, the reader will find only very simple and pragmatic strategies in this book. This book may not be a trendsetter but it is a different book that recommends simple, commonsense based winning and losing characteristics and practices that distinguish the big winners from big losers.

The book is organised around just four characteristics because of which big winners do better than big losers—sweet spots, agility, discipline and focus. While big losers have exactly the opposite characteristics—sour spots, rigidity, inaptness and diffuseness.

A company being in ‘sweet spots’ means it is better placed in the market than its competitors. One major reason of big winners doing so much better than the big losers is that they occupy sweet spots, the key to such sweet spots is to regularly deliver more value to the customer than the competitors. A company can only remain in sweet spots if it stays close to customers and understands their needs. Big winners know exactly what their customers want and why will they not switch over to their competitors. They satisfy the specialised needs of target customers, giving them the best value for their money. Customer loyalty is possible if a company co-designs products and services with customers, embeds the company in infrastructure and processes of their customers and if it takes initiative of brokering relationship between the customers and the customers’ suppliers. In contrast, big losers are involved in functional patterns, which result in misalignment with customers.

Agility, focus and discipline are the other three secrets of long-term success. Identification and the spread of sweet spots in different areas are of utmost importance but equally important are the agility of the organisation to quickly move into competitive grounds, discipline to protect them and focus for full exploitation of their merits. Agility is about ‘change with continuity’ and not just about change. Agility must be combined with discipline to protect the sweet spots with inherent defence. After identifying, occupying and fortifying a position of strength, it must be exploited to take full advantage. This needs a special focus to extend the sweet spots, and to reap all the advantages the spots can offer. In fact, all the three characteristics have to be integrated to become a big winner.

On the other hand, big losers are in sour spots, the positions, which are extremely competitive with others offering similar or equally good products or services. When a company is in sour spots, it is in a conspicuously poorer position than its competitors. The other traits, which make them losers, are rigidity, inaptness and diffuseness. Rigidity denotes not being able to move to an uncontested space, inaptness shows the inability to protect an uncontested space and diffuseness means, the inability to exploit an uncontested space.

The book is a result of studies carried out by more than 500 practicing managers, on the request of the author, in different sectors like technology, manufacturing, financial, food, relationship, etc. They prepared 42 reports, which were analysed to develop the insights of the book. The lessons learnt from the companies’ performance reviewed have resulted in the specific advice on what a company can do to become a big winner and avoid becoming a big loser. This book is clear, practical and provocative and can become an effective tool in the hands of any manager.

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