financial analysis

Ten timeless tests can help you kick the tires on your strategy and kick up the level of strategic dialogue throughout your company.

Have you tested your strategy lately?

‘What’s the next new thing in strategy?’ a senior executive

recently asked Phil Rosenzweig, a professor at IMD,1 in Switzerland. His

response was surprising for someone whose career is devoted to

advancing the state of the art of strategy: “With all respect, I think that’s

the wrong question. There’s always new stuff out there, and most of

it’s not very good. Rather than looking for the next musing, it’s probably

better to be thorough about what we know is true and make sure we

do that well.”

Let’s face it: the basic principles that make for good strategy often get

obscured. Sometimes the explanation is a quest for the next new thing—

natural in a field that emerged through the steady accumulation of

frameworks promising to unlock the secret of competitive advantage.2

In other cases, the culprit is torrents of data, reams of analysis, and

piles of documents that can be more distracting than enlightening.

Ultimately, strategy is a way of thinking, not a procedural exercise

or a set of frameworks. To stimulate that thinking and the dialogue that

goes along with it, we developed a set of tests aimed at helping exec-

utives assess the strength of their strategies. We focused on testing the

strategy itself (in other words, the output of the strategy-development

process), rather than the frameworks, tools, and approaches that generate

Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit

1 International Institute for Management Development. 2 For a rich account of strategy’s birth and growth as a field, see Walter Kiechel, The Lords of

Strategy, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2010.

J A N U A R Y 2 0 11

s t r a t e g y p r a c t i c e

2Have you tested your strategy lately?

strategies, for two reasons. First, companies develop strategy in many

different ways, often idiosyncratic to their organizations,

people, and markets. Second, many strategies emerge over time rather

than from a process of deliberate formulation.3

There are ten tests on our list, and not all are created equal. The first—

“will it beat the market?”—is comprehensive. The remaining nine dis-

aggregate the picture of a market-beating strategy, though it’s certainly

possible for a strategy to succeed without “passing” all nine of them.

This list may sound more complicated than the three Cs or the five forces

of strategy.4 But detailed pressure testing, in our experience, helps

pinpoint more precisely where the strategy needs work, while gener-

ating a deeper and more fruitful strategic dialogue.

Those conversations matter, but they often are loose and disjointed.

We heard that, loud and clear, over the past two years in workshops

where we explored our tests with more than 700 senior strategists

around the world. Furthermore, a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey

of 2,135 executives indicates that few strategies pass more than three

3 For a classic statement of the idea that strategies are more emergent than planned, see Henry Mintzberg, “Crafting strategy,” Harvard Business Review, 1987, July–August, Volume 65, Number 4, pp. 66–75.

4 The three Cs and the five forces are seminal strategy frameworks. The three Cs (competitors, customers, and company) were articulated by retired McKinsey partner Kenichi Ohmae in The Mind of the Strategist (McGraw-Hill, 1982). The five forces (barriers to entry, buyer power, supplier power, the threat of substitutes, and the degree of rivalry) were set forth by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter in Competitive Strategy (Free Press, 1998).

Q1 2011 Ten timeless tests Exhibit 1 of 2

Number of tests rated as fully consistent with company strategy, % of respondents

3 or fewer

4–6

Source: 2010 McKinsey survey of 2,135 global executives on testing business strategy

Most companies’ strategies pass fewer than four of the ten tests.

7–10

25

10

65

3 January 2011

of the tests. In contrast, the reflections of a range of current and former

strategy practitioners (see “How we do it: Strategic tests from four

senior executives,” on mckinseyquarterly.com) suggest that the tests

described here help formalize something that the best strategists do

quite intuitively.

The tests of a good strategy are timeless in nature. But the ability to

pressure-test a strategy is especially timely now. The financial crisis of

2008 and the recession that followed made some strategies obsolete,

revealed weaknesses in others, and forced many companies to confront

choices and trade-offs they put off in boom years. At the same time,

a shift toward shorter planning cycles and decentralized strategic deci-

sion making are increasing the utility of a common set of tests.5 All

this makes today an ideal time to kick the tires on your strategy.

Will your strategy beat the market?

All companies operate in markets surrounded by customers, suppliers,

competitors, substitutes, and potential entrants, all seeking to advance

their own positions. That process, unimpeded, inexorably drives eco-

nomic surplus—the gap between the return a company earns and its

cost of capital—toward zero.

For a company to beat the market by capturing and retaining an eco-

nomic surplus, there must be an imperfection that stops or at least slows

the working of the market. An imperfection controlled by a company

is a competitive advantage. These are by definition scarce and fleeting

because markets drive reversion to mean performance. The best com-

panies are emulated by those in the middle of the pack, and the worst

exit or undergo significant reform. As each player responds to and

learns from the actions of others, best practice becomes commonplace

rather than a market-beating strategy. Good strategies emphasize

difference—versus your direct competitors, versus potential substitutes,

and versus potential entrants.

Market participants play out the drama of competition on a stage beset

by randomness. Because the evolution of markets is path dependent—

that is, its current state at any one time is the sum product of all pre-

Test 1:

5 For more on strategy setting in today’s environment, see Lowell Bryan, “Dynamic management: Better decisions in uncertain times,” mckinseyquarterly.com, December 2009; and “Navigating the new normal: A conversation with four chief strategy officers,” mckinseyquarterly.com, December 2009.

4Have you tested your strategy lately?

vious events, including a great many random ones—the winners of today

are often the accidents of history. Consider the development of the

US tire industry. At its peak in the mid-1920s, a frenzy of entry had

created almost 300 competitors. Yet by the 1940s, four producers con-

trolled more than 70 percent of the market. Those winners happened

to make retrospectively lucky choices about location and technology,

but at the time it was difficult to tell which companies were truly fit

for the evolving environment. The histories of many other industries,

from aerospace to information technology, show remarkably simi-

lar patterns.

To beat the market, therefore, advantages have to be robust and respon-

sive in the face of onrushing market forces. Few companies, in our

experience, ask themselves if they are beating the market—the pres-

sures of “just playing along” seem intense enough. But playing along

can feel safer than it is. Weaker contenders win surprisingly often in

war when they deploy a divergent strategy, and the same is true

in business.6

Q1 2011 10 Timeless tests Exhibit 2 of 2

Performance cohorts based on position in 2001 relative to mean, n = 7431

20

15

10

5

0

–5

–10

–15 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0

–0.5

–1.0

–1.5

Return on invested capital (ROIC), %

Ratio of enterprise value to invested capital (EV/IC)

1 Sample of largest 1,200 nonfinancial US-listed companies in 2009 was narrowed to 743 that were also listed in 2001.

Source: Standard & Poor’s Compustat; McKinsey analysis

Markets drive a reversion to mean performance.

Top quintile

Middle quintile

Bottom quintile

6 See Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the weak win wars: A theory of asymmetric conflict, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

5 January 2011

Does your strategy tap a true source of advantage?

Know your competitive advantage, and you’ve answered the question

of why you make money (and vice versa). Competitive advantage

stems from two sources of scarcity: positional advantages and special

capabilities.

Positional advantages are rooted in structurally attractive markets. By

definition, such advantages favor incumbents: they create an asym-

metry between those inside and those outside high walls. For example,

in Australia, two beer makers control 95 percent of the market and

enjoy triple the margins of US brewers. This situation has sustained

itself for two decades, but it wasn’t always so. Beginning in the 1980s,

the Australian industry experienced consolidation. That change in struc-

ture was associated with a change in industry conduct (price growth

began outstripping general inflation) and a change in industry perfor-

mance (higher profitability). Understanding the relationship among

structure, conduct, and performance is a critical part of the quest for

positional advantage.

Special capabilities, the second source of competitive advantage, are

scarce resources whose possession confers unique benefits. The most

obvious resources, such as drug patents or leases on mineral deposits,

we call “privileged, tradable assets”: they can be bought and sold. A

second category of special capabilities, “distinctive competencies,” consists

of things a company does particularly well, such as innovating or

managing stakeholders. These capabilities can be just as powerful in

creating advantage but cannot be easily traded.

Too often, companies are cavalier about claiming special capabilities.

Such a capability must be critical to a company’s profits and exist in

abundance within it while being scarce outside. As such, special

capabilities tend to be specific in nature and few in number. Companies

often err here by mistaking size for scale advantage or overestimating

their ability to leverage capabilities across markets. They infer special

capabilities from observed performance, often without considering

other explanations (such as luck or positional advantage). Companies

should test any claimed capability advantage vigorously before pin-

ning their hopes on it.

When companies bundle together activities that collectively create

advantage, it becomes more difficult for competitors to identify and

Test 2:

6Have you tested your strategy lately?

replicate its exact source. Consider Aldi, the highly successful dis-

count grocery retailer. To deliver its value proposition of lower prices,

Aldi has completely redesigned the typical business system of a

supermarket: only 1,500 or so products rather than 30,000, the stock-

ing of one own-brand or private label rather than hundreds of

national brands, and superlean replenishment on pallets and trolleys,

thus avoiding the expensive task of hand stacking shelves. Given

the enormous changes necessary for any supermarket that wishes to

copy the total system, it is extremely difficult to mimic Aldi’s value

proposition.

Finally, don’t forget to take a dynamic view. What can erode positional

advantage? Which special capabilities are becoming vulnerable?

There is every reason to believe that competitors will exploit points of

vulnerability. Assume, like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, that you have

to run just to stay in the same place.

Is your strategy granular about where to compete?

The need to beat the market begs the question of which market.

Research shows that the unit of analysis used in determining strategy

(essentially, the degree to which a market is segmented) signifi-

cantly influences resource allocation and thus the likelihood of success:

dividing the same businesses in different ways leads to strikingly

different capital allocations.

What is the right level of granularity? Push within reason for the finest

possible objective segmentation of the market: think 30 to 50 seg-

ments rather than the more typical 5 or so. Too often, by contrast, the

business unit as defined by the organizational chart becomes the

default for defining markets, reducing from the start the potential scope

of strategic thinking.

Defining and understanding these segments correctly is one of the

most practical things a company can do to improve its strategy. Manage-

ment at one large bank attributed fast growth and share gains to

measurably superior customer perceptions and satisfaction. Examining

the bank’s markets at a more granular level suggested that 90 percent

of its outperformance could be attributed to a relatively high exposure

to one fast-growing city and to a presence in a fast-growing product

segment. This insight helped the bank avoid building its strategy on

Test 3:

7 January 2011

false assumptions about what was and wasn’t working for the operation

as a whole.

In fact, 80 percent of the variance in revenue growth is explained

by choices about where to compete, according to research summarized

in The Granularity of Growth, leaving only 20 percent explained by

choices about how to compete. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite

of the allocation of time and effort in a typical strategy-development

process. Companies should be shifting their attention greatly toward

the “where” and should strive to outposition competitors by regularly

reallocating resources as opportunities shift within and between

segments.

Does your strategy put you ahead of trends?

The emergence of new trends is the norm. But many strategies place

too much weight on the continuation of the status quo because they

extrapolate from the past three to five years, a time frame too brief to

capture the true violence of market forces.

A major innovation or an external shock in regulation, demand,

or technology, for example, can drive a rapid, full-scale industry tran-

sition. But most trends emerge fairly slowly—so slowly that com-

panies generally fail to respond until a trend hits profits. At this point,

it is too late to mount a strategically effective response, let alone

shape the change to your advantage. Managers typically delay action,

held back by sunk costs, an unwillingness to cannibalize a legacy

business, or an attachment to yesterday’s formula for success. The

cost of delay is steep: consider the plight of major travel agency

chains slow to understand the power of online intermediaries. Con-

versely, for companies that get ahead of the curve, major market

transitions are an opportunity to rethink their commitments in areas

ranging from technology to distribution and to tailor their strategies

to the new environment.

To do so, strategists must take trend analysis seriously. Always look to

the edges. How are early adopters and that small cadre of consumers

who seem to be ahead of the curve acting? What are small, innovative

entrants doing? What technologies under development could change

the game? To see which trends really matter, assess their potential

Test 4:

8Have you tested your strategy lately?

impact on the financial position of your company and articulate the

decisions you would make differently if that outcome were certain. For

example, don’t just stop at an aging population as a trend—work it

through to its conclusion. Which consumer behaviors would change?

Which particular product lines would be affected? What would be

the precise effect on the P&L? And how does that picture line up with

today’s investment priorities?

Does your strategy rest on privileged insights?

Data today can be cheap, accessible, and easily assembled into detailed

analyses that leave executives with the comfortable feeling of pos-

sessing an informed strategy. But much of this is noise and most of it

is widely available to rivals. Furthermore, routinely analyzing readily

available data diverts attention from where insight-creating advantage

lies: in the weak signals buried in the noise.

In the 1990s, when the ability to burn music onto CDs emerged,

no one knew how digitization would play out; MP3s, peer-to-peer file

sharing, and streaming Web-based media were not on the horizon.

But one corporation with a large record label recognized more rapidly

than others that the practical advantage of copyright protection

could quickly become diluted if consumers began copying material.

Early recognition of that possibility allowed the CEO to sell the

business at a multiple based on everyone else’s assumption that the status

quo was unthreatened.

Developing proprietary insights isn’t easy. In fact, this is the element

of good strategy where most companies stumble (see sidebar, “The

insight deficit”). A search for problems can help you get started.

Create a short list of questions whose answers would have major

implications for the company’s strategy—for example, “What will we

regret doing if the development of India hiccups or stalls, and what

will we not regret?” In doing so, don’t forget to examine the assump-

tions, explicit and implicit, behind an established business model.

Do they still fit the current environment?

Another key is to collect new data through field observations or

research rather than to recycle the same industry reports everyone else

uses. Similarly, seeking novel ways to analyze the data can generate

Test 5:

9 January 2011

powerful new insights. For example, one supermarket chain we know

recently rethought its store network strategy on the basis of surprising

results from a new clustering algorithm.

Finally, many strategic breakthroughs have their root in a simple but

profound customer insight (usually solving an old problem for the

customer in a new way). In our experience, companies that go out of

their way to experience the world from the customer’s perspective

routinely develop better strategies.

Does your strategy embrace uncertainty?

A central challenge of strategy is that we have to make choices now,

but the payoffs occur in a future environment we cannot fully know or

control. A critical step in embracing uncertainty is to try to charac-

terize exactly what variety of it you face—a surprisingly rare activity at

many companies. Our work over the years has emphasized four levels

of uncertainty. Level one offers a reasonably clear view of the future:

a range of outcomes tight enough to support a firm decision. At level

two, there are a number of identifiable outcomes for which a company

should prepare. At level three, the possible outcomes are represented

not by a set of points but by a range that can be understood as a proba-

bility distribution. Level four features total ambiguity, where even

the distribution of outcomes is unknown.

In our experience, companies oscillate between assuming, simplis-

tically, that they are operating at level one (and making bold but unjusti-

fied point forecasts) and succumbing to an unnecessarily pessimistic

level-four paralysis. In each case, careful analysis of the situation usually

redistributes the variables into the middle ground of levels two

and three.

Rigorously understanding the uncertainty you face starts with listing

the variables that would influence a strategic decision and prioritizing

them according to their impact. Focus early analysis on removing

as much uncertainty as you can—by, for example, ruling out impossible

outcomes and using the underlying economics at work to highlight

outcomes that are either mutually reinforcing or unlikely because they

would undermine one another in the market. Then apply tools such

as scenario analysis to the remaining, irreducible uncertainty, which

should be at the heart of your strategy.

Test 6:

10Have you tested your strategy lately?

Does your strategy balance commitment and flexibility?

Commitment and flexibility exist in inverse proportion to each other:

the greater the commitment you make, the less flexibility remains.

This tension is one of the core challenges of strategy. Indeed, strategy

can be expressed as making the right trade-offs over time between

commitment and flexibility.

Making such trade-offs effectively requires an understanding of which

decisions involve commitment. Inside any large company, hundreds

of people make thousands of decisions each year. Only a few are strategic:

those that involve commitment through hard-to-reverse investments

in long-lasting, company-specific assets. Commitment is the only path

to sustainable competitive advantage.

In a world of uncertainty, strategy is about not just where and how to

compete but also when. Committing too early can be a leap in the

dark. Being too late is also dangerous, either because opportunities are

perishable or rivals can seize advantage while your company stands

on the sidelines. Flexibility is the essential ingredient that allows com-

panies to make commitments when the risk/return trade-off seems

most advantageous.

A market-beating strategy will focus on just a few crucial, high-

commitment choices to be made now, while leaving flexibility for other

such choices to be made over time. In practice, this approach means

building your strategy as a portfolio comprising three things: big bets,

or committed positions aimed at gaining significant competitive

advantage; no-regrets moves, which will pay off whatever happens; and

real options, or actions that involve relatively low costs now but can

be elevated to a higher level of commitment as changing conditions war-

rant. You can build underpriced options into a strategy by, for exam-

ple, modularizing major capital projects or maintaining the flexibility to

switch between different inputs.

Test 7:

11 January 2011

Is your strategy contaminated by bias?

It’s possible to believe honestly that you have a market-beating strat-

egy when, in fact, you don’t. Sometimes, that’s because forces beyond

your control change. But in other cases, the cause is unintentional

fuzzy thinking.

Behavioral economists have identified many characteristics of the

brain that are often strengths in our broader, personal environment

but that can work against us in the world of business decision making.

The worst offenders include overoptimism (our tendency to hope for

the best and believe too much in our own forecasts and abilities),

anchoring (tying our valuation of something to an arbitrary reference

point), loss aversion (putting too much emphasis on avoiding down-

sides and so eschewing risks worth taking), the confirmation bias (over-

weighting information that validates our opinions), herding (taking

comfort in following the crowd), and the champion bias (assigning to

an idea merit that’s based on the person proposing it).

Strategy is especially prone to faulty logic because it relies on extrap-

olating ways to win in the future from a complex set of factors

observed today. This is fertile ground for two big inference problems:

attribution error (succumbing to the “halo effect”) and survivorship

bias (ignoring the “graveyard of silent failures”). Attribution error is

the false attribution of success to observed factors; it is strategy by

hindsight and assumes that replicating the actions of another company

will lead to similar results. Survivorship bias refers to an analysis

based on a surviving population, without consideration of those who

did not live to tell their tale: this approach skews our view of what

caused success and presents no insights into what might cause failure—

were the survivors just luckier? Case studies have their place, but

hindsight is in reality not 20/20. There are too many unseen factors.

Developing multiple hypotheses and potential solutions to choose

among is one way to “de-bias” decision making. Too often, the typical

Test 8:

12Have you tested your strategy lately?

drill is to develop a promising hypothesis and put a lot of effort

into building a fact base to validate it. In contrast, it is critical to bring

fresh eyes to the issues and to maintain a culture of challenge, in

which the obligation to dissent is fostered.

The decision-making process can also be de-biased by, for example,

specifying objective decision criteria in advance and examining the

possibility of being wrong. Techniques such as the “premortem assess-

ment” (imagining yourself in a future where your decision turns out to

have been mistaken and identifying why that might have been so)

can also be useful.

Is there conviction to act on your strategy?

This test and the one that follows aren’t strictly about the strategy itself

but about the investment you’ve made in implementing it—a distinc-

tion that in our experience quickly becomes meaningless because the

two, inevitably, become intertwined. Many good strategies fall short

in implementation because of an absence of conviction in the organi-

zation, particularly among the top team, where just one or two non-

believers can strangle strategic change at birth.

Where a change of strategy is needed, that is usually because changes

in the external environment have rendered obsolete the assumptions

underlying a company’s earlier strategy. To move ahead with imple-

mentation, you need a process that openly questions the old assump-

tions and allows managers to develop a new set of beliefs in tune

with the new situation. This goal is not likely to be achieved just via

lengthy reports and presentations. Nor will the social processes

required to absorb new beliefs—group formation, building shared

meaning, exposing and reconciling differences, aligning and accept-

ing accountability—occur in formal meetings.

CEOs and boards should not be fooled by the warm glow they feel after

a nice presentation by management. They must make sure that the

whole team actually shares the new beliefs that support the strategy.

This requirement means taking decision makers on a journey of

discovery by creating experiences that will help them viscerally grasp

mismatches that may exist between what the new strategy requires

and the actions and behavior that have brought them success for many

Test 9:

13 January 2011

years. For example, visit plants and customers or tour a country your

company plans to enter, so that the leadership team can personally meet

crucial stakeholders. Mock-ups, video clips, and virtual experiences

also can help.

The result of such an effort should be a support base of influencers who

feel connected to the strategy and may even become evangelists for

it. Because strategy often emanates from the top, and CEOs are accus-

tomed to being heeded, this commonsense step often gets overlooked,

to the great detriment of the strategy.

Have you translated your strategy into an action plan?

In implementing any new strategy, it’s imperative to define clearly

what you are moving from and where you are moving to with respect

to your company’s business model, organization, and capabilities.

Develop a detailed view of the shifts required to make the move, and

ensure that processes and mechanisms, for which individual exec-

utives must be accountable, are in place to effect the changes. Quite

simply, this is an action plan. Everyone needs to know what to do.

Be sure that each major “from–to shift” is matched with the energy to

make it happen. And since the totality of the change often repre-

sents a major organizational transformation, make sure you and your

senior team are drawing on the large body of research and experi-

ence offering solid advice on change management—a topic beyond the

scope of this article!

Finally, don’t forget to make sure your ongoing resource allocation pro-

cesses are aligned with your strategy. If you want to know what it

actually is, look where the best people and the most generous budgets

are—and be prepared to change these things significantly. Effort

spent aligning the budget with the strategy will pay off many times over.

As we’ve discussed the tests with hundreds of senior executives at many

of the world’s largest companies, we’ve come away convinced that a

lot of these topics are part of the strategic dialogue in organizations. But

we’ve also heard time and again that discussion of such issues is often,

as one executive in Japan recently told us, “random, simultaneous, and

extremely confusing.” Our hope is that the tests will prove a simple

and effective antidote: a means of quickly identifying gaps in executives’

Test 10:

14Have you tested your strategy lately?

strategic thinking, opening their minds toward new ways of using

strategy to create value, and improving the quality of the strategy-

development process itself.

The authors wish to acknowledge the many contributions of McKinsey

alumnus Nick Percy, now the head of strategy for BBC Worldwide, to the

thinking behind this article.

Chris Bradley is a principal in McKinsey’s Sydney office, Martin

Hirt is a director in the Taipei office, and Sven Smit is a director in the

Amsterdam office.

The insight deficit

A fresh strategic insight—something

your company sees that no one

else does—is one of the foundations

of competitive advantage. It helps

companies focus their resources

on moves that separate them from

the pack. That makes the following

interesting: in a recent survey, only

35% of 2,135 global executives

believed their strategies rested on

unique and powerful insights. That

figure was dramatically lower than

the average—62 percent—for nine

other tests we asked executives to

measure their strategies against.

What’s more, only 14 percent

of surveyed executives placed

novel insights among the top

three strategic influencers of

financial performance. One likely

explanation: the widespread

availability of information and

adoption of sophisticated strategy

frameworks creates an impression

that “everyone knows what we know

and is probably analyzing the data

in the same ways that we are.” The

danger is obvious: if strategists

question their ability to generate

novel insights, they are less likely

to reach for the relative advantages

that are most likely to differentiate

them from competitors.

For the complete survey results,

see “Putting strategies to the test:

McKinsey Global Survey results,”

on mckinseyquarterly.com.

Copyright © 2011 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. We welcome your comments on this article. Please send them to [email protected].

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