Playing To Win
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights Year V Preview
Podcasts & Co-Authors
Please indulge me for one final intermezzo between Year IV and Year V of the Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) series. I am excited to announce two things about Year V — podcasts and co-authoring — before its launch a week from today.
PTW/PI Podcasts
The first announcement is a podcast series on PTW/PI. Up until now, the series has had a singular form — written prose. The pieces take 6 to 9 minutes to read (as measured by Medium) and have an average count of 1,780 words. As I mentioned last week, the series has attracted a nice total of 2.2 million views to date.
But obviously, written prose is far from the only medium available to transmit the PTW/PI information. In fact, perhaps it is a dying one. Despite that, I like written prose. Writing prose forces precision of thought — I agree with Jeff Bezos on that front. Every piece is edited (by me) a dozen times before I post it. Plus, it feels like the written word is recorded for posterity.
However, I can’t ignore the fact that a single video of mine, A Plan is not a Strategy has over 5 million views — twice the views of 225 PTW/PI pieces combined. And another, The Art of War: The Greatest Strategy Book Ever Written, just went over 1 million views — almost half of the entire PTW/PI series. Clearly, many more people like video than prose.
So, when my friend Tiffani Bova, the terrific writer (Growth IQ and The Experience Mindset) and popular podcaster (What’s Next Podcast) suggested doing a podcast series together, I was all ears. Her thought was to have discussions that could go into greater detail on PTW/PI pieces, perhaps interacting with the reader audience more, etc.
It wasn’t hard to decide to do it — I like an excuse to work with Tiffani. Our initial plan — though we will podcast and learn — is to do two things. The first is podcasts covering some of the pieces that were the best of PTW/PI Years I through IV. The second is podcasts on the new PTW/PI Year V pieces as they come out.
We are going to put them out initially as LinkedIn Live podcasts but then put them up on various platforms (YouTube, Apple, etc.).
The first one is going to be on the most popular piece in the first four years of the series, Being ‘Too Busy’ Means Your Personal Strategy Sucks. The next one will be on the opening piece of Year V — which I will preview below.
Co-Authors in PTW/PI Year V
The second announcement is that in Year V, I am going to include co-authored pieces for the first time.
I have contemplated doing this from time to time in the first four years, but I haven’t yet. For example, last year I worked on a leadership piece together with my friend and longtime writing collaborator, AG Lafley. It was aimed for Harvard Business Review, but we didn’t know whether it would be accepted — one never does. AG was so keen on getting the work out into the world that he suggested having me publish it as a PTW/PI if HBR didn’t accept it. And because AG is so ego-less, he meant for me to just publish it myself.
The point became moot because HBR accepted the piece and Leaders Shouldn’t Try to Do It All was published in the Jan-Feb 2025 issue — it is still on newsstands! Though hypothetical, I imagine that I would have done it as a co-authored PTW/PI if HBR had rejected it.
But the experience got me thinking and I decided that rather than merely speculate about co-authoring, I would just do it in Year V. And there may be an AG piece coming. Who knows?
I do know what the first co-authored PTW/PI will be, and I am super excited about it. In fact, Year V will kick off with it.
I have been working for the past year with ReD Associates, an impressive strategy boutique headquartered in Denmark but global in scope, on what we jointly think is the next major evolution in strategy — something we are calling Strategy 3.0. It has been a blast. I really enjoy the ReD folks!
I am pleased to reveal that next week in the PTW/PI series, we are going public with our first writing on Strategy 3.0. It is a piece called Beyond Network Economics. It is co-authored with my clever friend and Strategy 3.0 collaborator, Mikkel Krenchel, who is a ReD Partner working out of its New York City office.
We can’t wait to get it out there for comments and critique. Look for it exactly one week from now.
And I look forward to more co-authored collaborative pieces in 2025.
