Looking back on those childhood Monopoly games, it seems like the same few kids usually won. It’s not that they were luckier with dice. It’s not that they got more from the Community Chest. Well, maybe they did play banker more often. But what they did do unfailingly was to develop an approach to each game, based on where they landed and where others landed, and nurture a ceaseless desire to win. They knew when to trade for a property or buy it on the side before anyone else could see a pattern. They knew just how many jellybeans, or similar tokens of appreciation, it would take to negotiate down a price. We could say they had aggressive and successful competitive strategies.

Strategy 101

In any industry, some companies, like those high-performing Monopoly players, will always outperform their competitors. They have been able to establish and sustain competitive advantage over others. To survive, every company has to have some degree of competitive advantage. Even in cases where advantage is minimal – where products or services are virtually identical – companies can remain profitable. For a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee, competitive advantage might be a better location than the Krispy Kreme. In most industries, competitive advantage is a more complex issue, arising from a combination of product appeal, production capacity, pricing structure, marketing programs, distribution channels, leadership quality and a culturally inherent desire to win. Competitive advantage is sustainable when the strategy that produces it cannot be easily copied by competitors.

More than ever before, leaders and managers must view the development and execution of competitive strategy as an ongoing activity that defines the company’s direction and steps to get there, inspires the quality of people and performance needed to get there, and builds in the capacity and competence for change as conditions alter while getting there.

Changing Competitive Strategy (continued)
A Strategy Is a Strategy Is a Strategy

When does a company have a true competitive strategy? According to the all-time strategy guru, Michael E. Porter, you will know a true strategy when you see the following characteristics:

1. A company with a true strategy is able to demonstrate that it is trying to deliver distinctive values that are different from its competitors.
   
2. A company with a true strategy carries out a set of activities to deliver the product in a different way from its competitors.
   
3. A company with a true strategy will have come by it through debate, struggle and tradeoffs, sacrificing some of its subsidiaries or opportunities to focus on the strategy.
   
4. A company with a true strategy ensures that all its activities  align with its goals and strategies.
   
5. A company with a true strategy demonstrates continuity in execution, not developing one strategy for 2001 only to trash it for a completely different one in 2002.

In a September 2000 interview titled “Soothsayer of Strategy,” for London’s Sunday Telegraph, Porter said he believes “the best CEOs are able to give a clear purpose to their organizations. You find they endlessly repeat their strategy to their employees.” The interviewer asked Porter why it is that even successful corporations can be doomed to eventual failure, even if they have magnificent strategies. His reply, “…many companies undermine their own strategies – a lot of the problem is internal. Once you are successful you want to grow. It’s natural. But the very act of growing can undermine a successful strategy. Then of course there can be structural changes in the environment that undermine a strategy.”

Approaches to Competitive Strategy
Porter published his seminal work Competitive Strategy (his latest version was published by the Free Press, 1998) some 20 years ago. The book continues to be a best seller today and is considered one of the “important works” by most of today’s big decision-makers. MBA students and management consultants worldwide study his five forces,  which states that competition within industries is driven by five basic factors:

1. Threat of new entrants
2. Threat of substitute products or services
3. Bargaining power of suppliers
4. Bargaining power of buyers
5. Rivalry among existing firms

In response to these five factors, Porter identifies three basic sources of competitive advantage, which he refers to as generic strategies. In his February 2000 CMA Management article, “The Quest for Competitive Advantage,” Raymond Suutari summarizes the sources of competitive advantage along these lines:

1. Cost leadership – having the lowest costs in the industry. Cost advantage varies between industries. It is generally based on economies of sale, preferential access to natural resources/raw materials and superior, proprietary technology. Cost leadership is effective only if a company can command prices close to the industry average and avoid discounting practices.
2. Differentiation – making a product or service so unique that people will pay higher prices andor many people will buy it and continue to buy it over time.Differentiation can be tangible, based on superior quality of performance, or intangible, based on image or brand. Differentiation can be derived from product/service characteristics or distribution channels. This strategy may impose a higher cost structure on a company, which is acceptable as long as the price premium covers these costs.
3. Focus – adopting a narrow competitive scope in an industry. Opportunities for advantage may arise from buyer characteristics, product specification or geography/location. Focus can be based on targeting a segment with unique needs not served by others (differentiation) or having specialized equipment that can handle target market needs more efficiently (cost).

The Red Zone Alert: The Changing Competitive Landscape

Competitive strategies may well have to change unexpectedly, or at least be designed to allow for significant adjustment, because the environment in which companies operate changes: the economy of a region might collapse or boom; new technology could easily end a product’s life cycle; or new regulation or legislation can dramatically alter the competitive landscape.When a new CEO arrives, that event itself is often a signal for strategic change since that is what he or she was likely charged with doing by the board. Whatever its basis, the ultimate success of a competitive strategy depends in equal parts on the soundness of the decision and actions identified, and on the effectiveness and aggressiveness of its implementation.

As long as the pace of change was relatively predictable, companies in well-defined industries could compete successfully using long-favored competitive strategies based on quality and productivity, giving customers the best value for their money. As the pace of change accelerates, preoccupation with existing competitive strategies is likely to erode a company’s market share and profitability. Success can be a company’s undoing. Failing to act on the undercurrents that change the conditions of competition, IBM and GM missed major shifts in the marketplace and struggled for years to adjust and recapture customers.
The average life span for most organizations is estimated to be 40 years. Well, age is relative, but the desire to dodge the “old corporate age” bullet drives a growing business to corporate renewal consultants. Their demise (companies and leaders) is too often the result of failure to understand and address emerging needs for new markets, for new products, and for new means to distribute them – the future competitive “space.”

The Red Zone Problem: Changing the Competitive Strategy

Divining competitive strategies used to be an exercise to develop great answers to the fundamental question, “How do we position our company and gain or increase advantage in a known environment?” The more relevant question today is, “How do we position our company to keep the horizon of an ever-evolving environment in view and assess the characteristics of that environment so we can figure out what’s to our advantage and what’s not? Can’t we just stop time until we get this figured out?” Sorry folks, it doesn’t work that way.

Recent literature advises leaders to rethink the basis for planning strategy in today’s very fluid environment. Rather than positioning a company in a given industry space and focusing the company’s collective energies on the position relative to competitors, leaders should consider how they can influence their competitive environment – create it or shape it.

• In a collaborative arrangement with Philips, the European electronics manufacturers, Sony reshaped a market environment and quickly moved to capture it before Philips or other firms had grasped its potential. Philips saw the tape recorder as an expensive office product; Sony envisioned a commercial product – the Walkman – that could reach millions of customers. Philips saw the CD player as a luxury product; Sony envisioned a middle-of-the-road product and quickly scaled up capacity to preempt the market.
  
  
• Amazon, ebay, e*trade, and Priceline have helped create the dynamics of a new competitive space as well as influence that of many traditional industries.

To shape an environment, leaders start the planning process at a different point: imagining the environment and then charting the direction and formatting the elements (major milestones) along the way. Speed of reaction is a critical element of competitive strategy. And it is not tied to a time clock or corporate planning calendar. Rules of engagement are created in real time, as leaders refocus and readjust their approaches to competition and redefine the environment. Competitive strategies will change.

No primer on strategy would be finished without some real, live examples of companies who succeeded and failed in the Red Zone of strategy change. These examples are designed to give life, color, and great complexity to the simple theories discussed thus far. The examples are designed as much to get the juices flowing as they are to make specific points about Red Zone principles. The examples hopefully make the point that fooling around with an organization’s competitive strategy, its way of approaching its marketplace, is serious business.

Red Zone Game Plan for Changing Competitive Strategy

And now for the Red Zone principles that should apply to the changing of competitive strategy. The goal in this chapter is not to duplicate the principles of Chapter Four; instead we want to show variations and distinctions of those principles for the  Red Zone maneuver of changing competitive strategy.

Red Zone Principle One: Declare the Company in a Red Zone
When changing the company’s competitive strategy, special commitment is needed.  That needed level of commitment really is Olympic-level motivation and creativity to achieve the gain coupled with “do or die” resolve to avoid the loss. Even though changing the competitive strategy is the most difficult Red Zone maneuver, convincing the organization that special commitment is needed may, in fact, be easier for this maneuver than others because of the direct connection of strategy to customers and competitors.

Our experience suggests that the most effective way to get the organization into the spirit and importance of this Red Zone maneuver is to compare clearly and boldly the organization’s intention and performance to that of major competitors. In this Red Zone, management should be able to show direct competitive impact, such as decreasing market share, decreasing customer orders and interest in products and services, customers changing from the Red Zone company to the competitor, and so on. Following are successful tactic to communicate the Red Zone condition to employees in the organization:

• Setting up a scorecard that shows the company’s market share and/or financial performance compared to the leading competitor
• Buying the competitor’s product and making it available for the organization’s employees to use, measure, compare, evaluate, and, therefore, worry about
• Conducting and publishing customer satisfaction surveys that directly compared the company’s products with those of competitors
• Cleverly using graphics to show the competitive challenge. Bell Helicopter distributed 3x5 cards with the Bell logo sprinkled with two or three small red laser spots. The CEO was able to convincingly say that “competitors had Bell in their laser sights.”

Management should not assume that everyone understands the company is in a Red Zone; the Red Zone message must be stated clearly and explicitly to all. Have the leadership team all acknowledge publicly and privately that the company is in the Red Zone, and ideally, give a clear signal to their troops. Consider using a code word to indicate Red Zone management, an obvious one such as “Red Zone,” so you can communicate and mobilize the organization more quickly. Tell the organization why you are in a Red Zone, and the trigger that put the company there. Organizational Leaders are sometimes reluctant to admit they are in a Red Zone, especially if it is viewed as failure, but it should be viewed as a strong leadership move to “take the hill.”

Red Zone Principle Two: Put the Best Players in the Game
Changing competitive strategy is really top management’s game. In fact, it is the CEO’s game. Organizations just don’t change strategy without the CEO being in the thick of things. Changing strategy will not be a consensus move without his leadership. This maneuver calls for bold leadership. The CEO must see the new strategy in his sleep and feel it in his bones as well as talk it and walk it around the company.

Changing strategy is the place for integrity, grit and resolve, and for tough leaders who will take the organization where it would not have gone. The CEO must know his team including everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.  This is not a time for training and development.

Changing competitive strategy will begin with the design of the new strategy and end with that new strategy’s execution throughout the organization. This execution step must be taken in an organized and comprehensive way. Changing strategy takes quick, bold movement, not incrementalism, so leaders with authority are needed to get things done.

Every top executive in the organization that is changing competitive strategy should have a Red Zone role. That is, they should each have an important and visible piece of the Red Zone action in addition to their day job, or their usual duties in day-to-day operations.

• Red Zone Duties of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
  • Chief customer advocate who ensures that the strategy change is really hooked to added value in the marketplace.  The CEO must stay tuned in to the marketplace during the strategy change maneuver
  • Chief strategy advocate to the board and to investors.  The CEO’s goal should be to keep the Board of Directors informed, involved, and supportive.  Keep the investor community informed – they can be your ally or your downfall; manage that relationship proactively
  • Chief communications officer to the firm on both the case for strategy change and the specifics of the changed strategy. Only the CEO can be credible to the firm in explaining, pushing, and insisting on the strategy change.
  • During the design phase, the CEO is the master designer, ensuring that the specifics of the new strategy are right and that they meet marketplace objectives. The CEO must use a leadership style that includes top-down direction while hearing and incorporating bottom up feedback.
  • During the execution phase, the CEO is the master program manager, insisting that mechanical changes necessary for the strategy change get made on time. This is the guy that insists that we will build to spec. Major provider of resources and internal obstacle remover. In addition, the CEO must keep the ultimate time clock on the maneuver.

• Red Zone Duties of the Chief Operating Officer (COO)
  • Intimately involved in the design of the strategy
  • Chief executor of the new strategy. The COO and her direct reports will be the folks on the spot for implementing the strategy change.
  • Day-to-day owner of the customer scorecard since the COO owns those parts of the organization that must be altered to produce the desired customer scorecard.
  • Works with the CEO and his program manager to understand what changes in work processes and plant/equipment and tools will be necessary to move to the new strategy.
  • Leader in getting process changes and plant alterations done.
  • Leader in day-to-day teamwork of the executive team as it focuses on internal issues (while the CEO works external as well as internal issues)
  • Red Zone Duties of the Chief Sales Officer
  • Key focus is on customer relationships during the shift to a new strategy. Responsible for key customer interaction and market impact.
  • Responsible for keeping the CEO and the executive team in sync with the marketplace during and after the strategy shift.
  • Responsible for rationalizing product and market strategies as needed to support the overall change in competitive strategy.
  • Chief communicator to customers to explain how the strategy change will produce value. The company’s advertising and public relations should be aligned to the new strategy, fit with the customers’ needs, and signal a strategy change to the marketplace.
  • Responsible for keeping the organization informed about the potential impacts that the strategy shift is likely to have on customers.
  • Chief pricing officer working directly with the CEO, COO and CFO to pick price points that complement the changed strategy

• Red Zone Duties of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
  • Leader in getting metrics in place to measure the results of strategy change, making adjustments to the company’s balanced scorecard.
  • Assisting the CEO with the resourcing needed to get the strategy changed.
  • Devil’s advocate for investment in the strategy.
  • Works with the CEO and Human Resources Officer to ensure that monetary incentives are in place to adequately motivate key organization members to successfully make the strategy change.
  • Red Zone Duties of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)
  • Chief Customer information officer who works with the CEO and the Chief Sales officer to identify the information the firm must manage to ensure the success of the competitive strategy.
  • Chief information technology strategist who ensures that the company’s technology strategy accommodates the change in competitive strategy.
  • Works directly with the CEO and CFO to ensure that the company metrics and scorecards for measuring strategy results are in place. Working directly with top management and IT resources to ensure that scorecard changes can be supported and that real-time information is available for progress reporting.
  • Works directly with program management and the COO to ensure that information technology resources/systems are prepared and aligned to support both work and management process changes required by the change in strategy.
    
    
• Red Zone Duties of the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)
  • Helping to find and identify the manpower needed for running the business while the company’s best players work on Red Zone.
  • Leads the charge in identifying new skill sets to be recruited and hired and/or trained that changes in competitive strategy frequently call for.
  • Acts as the company’s Chief People advocate. Monitors stress and strain on the organization and recommends support to people as needed for Red Zone success.
  • Leader in aligning employee performance management systems to focus on the new strategy  as well as changes in incentive compensation criteria.
  • Providing trained HR generalists to assist line management in making important changes while the strategy change is being executed.
  • Plays a key role in ensuring that the executive team is working together well.

Not only is changing competitive strategy the place for strong individual leaders with authority, it is the place for top-notch executive teamwork. The executive team must be absolutely together on this one. Several team building sessions with top management may be required until they are all in sync on the need for changing the strategy, the direction of the new strategy, and the execution plan. The team must work seamlessly without even needing to have lengthy communications.  Since strategy change is likely to impact most of the organization in thinking or doing things differently, there can be no chinks in the armor of the top management message.

This Red Zone maneuver is the place for the very best technical expertise available anywhere. In no other Red Zone does the organization need as much business expertise, in the form of expert knowledge of the industry, of customers and what they want, of competitors and where they are going. While most companies have industry expertise and market knowledge, this is not the time to trust that internal knowledge exclusively. The source of expertise is not critical; management just must have the courage to go get it, from consultants, from contractors, from study institutes, from panels of customers, and/or from competitor refugees.

Red Zone Principle Three: Focus on the Customer
While every Red Zone maneuver should explicitly consider the customer as the ultimate reference, the strategy change maneuver lives or dies by what happens to the customer. The goal of a strategy change is to show the customer a different face, with new or altered products or services, new attributes or performance of those products/services. Constant use of the customer scorecard, like the one shown in Chapter Four, is required for strategy work. The understanding and measurement of  progress on the customer scorecard is  at the heart of the entire strategy exercise.  Use the scorecard to think through the impact that you want to have on the marketplace, and use actual measures to know where you want to come out of this strategy change maneuver with respect to your customers and competitors.

The scorecard can be used to identify alternative ways of winning with the customers and defeating competitors. For example, a company using the scorecard might conceive of different combinations of values and attributes a la Michael Porter’s tools covered in this chapter’s primer:

• further differentiation of the company’s products and services
• the move to a low price/high value approach to the customer
• even the move to a niche strategy

Identification and then evaluation of these various alternatives become the heart of what we described earlier as the Red Zone design engine, the recycling of scorecard, goals, and blueprint until the company has a design direction that will work for them in the marketplace.

The customer scorecard exercise seems to work best if real live customers are involved. How is that for novel and creative thinking in the Red Zone?  We have had clients successfully use panels of customers to help lay out the scorecard as a part of the design of the strategy change. Those panels have then been used to keep track of the progress of the strategy implementation in terms of customer impacts.

A variety of actions can be taken to ensure the strategy change is going right at the desired customer impact:

• Categorize your customers based on their response to change – i.e., progressive early adopters, middle-of-the-roaders, and late bloomers. Test your proposed strategy moves with the progressive early adopters rather than the late bloomers for a true read.
• Get early adopter customers to help you differentiate your products/services in the marketplace based on their benefits and successes using your product/service.
• Help your early adopter customers translate the strategy shift into a win for them. By going through that translation exercise, you may identify hidden benefits as well as traps.
• Validate proposed changes of products and/or services with other customers.
• Project competitor position down the road; don’t use the competitor’s current position.
• Quickly and visibly respond to customer feedback. Let customers know you heard them and appreciate their input.

Red Zone Principle Four: Set Clear Red Zone Goals
The primary reason for changing competitive strategy is to increase the company’s appeal to customers at the expense of competitors. Either we want to take market share from competitors or create products and services that will make market; that is, cause buyers to enter our marketplace. Market share and margin are the key here.

After fully understanding the customer scorecard, top management’s job is to set goals for the strategy change that the organization can understand and follow. The best goals to use for this kind of Red Zone maneuver are as follows:

• Market share (units and dollars)
• Competitive ratings (i.e., relative moves in rankings of products and services compared to competitors)
• Profitability (by unit and totals for market segments)

The set goals should be derived from estimates of marketplace reaction to the changes the company proposes on the customer scorecard. That is, we are doing the maneuver to impact the market; we are impacting the market by changing our product and service attributes so that they will be more valuable to customers. That increased value should translate into market share and profitability. If the translation is no increased market share or profitability, then the scorecard thinking must be re-done until we are able to anticipate improvement in share and profitability.

The review of market data is critical in this step of identifying Red Zone goals for the change in competitive strategy. While speed is of the essence in the Red Zone, it is usually worth some time to obtain a high quality reaction from the market place about the proposed scorecard changes before making a call on goals. Many Red Zone goals are pure guesses. We want to go for market-educated guesses.

What about other goals areas? What about the balanced scorecard idea of serving up several goals to ensure that the organization keeps a balanced focus? It is a good idea to have balanced measures during normal times, but in a Red Zone change of competitive strategy, it works to have goals biased toward the ultimate desired impact, market share.

As a cross check on these set goals, top management can ask employees whether or not the set goals communicate the fact that the company is in a war, a business battle with the bad guys for the hearts of  customers. If the battle is not clear from the goals, it will be difficult to get the organization mobilized for success in the Red Zone.

Red Zone Principle Five: Blueprint for Success
The goal of the blueprint step in Red Zone strategy change is to build a picture of the organization as it serves up its products and services to customers in a new way, a way that will provide better overall value to the customer. To say it another way, the blueprint is the way the organization will describe its new business design or model to its employees in a way that they can understand, evaluate, and then use as an end target during Red Zone execution.

The heart of the blueprint should be a compelling picture of how customers will be using the products and services that will follow the revised customers scorecard. The heart of any strategy change should focus on customers relating differently and better to the organization’s product and service offerings. In the blueprint step, management must picture that way of working with the customers so that it seems feasible and logical.

In addition to the picture and/or description of how the organization will work with the customers, Red Zone managers must picture the company’s manufacturing and customer service processes as they would need to operate to deliver the products and services depicted on the scorecard. The final piece of the blueprint for Red Zone strategy change should be a description of how employees will need to work differently around changed processes.

Completion of the blueprint is the final step in the Red Zone design engine that links the customer scorecard and Red Zone goals with the description of how the organization will need to look and operate after the implementation of a changed strategy. In a way, the blueprint step is one more test of the organization’s ability to change its way of operating to achieve the desired strategy change. We have had clients at this step literally say, “We just can’t ever see our organization operating the way it will need to operate for that strategy change.” Such a statement should immediately be followed by another cycle of the Red Zone design engine, starting with a re-examination of other scorecard options that might be both winners with the customer and deemed possible by the organization.

Don’t Move! Don’t go to Red Zone execution principles until there is a clear picture of the improved business design that will be created:

• clear understanding of how the Red Zone strategy change will positively impact the customers and negatively impact competitors,
• there are clear goals for the maneuver in market share, market dollars, margin, and competitive ranking, and
• there is a completed blueprint for the organization after the maneuver, as it achieves those goals to satisfy those customers.

Red Zone Principles for Execution of a New Strategy

The Red Zone execution principles for strategy change are especially critical since the Red Zone goals and blueprint are likely to represent a comprehensive and challenging change to the organization. It will take a lot of leadership horsepower in this execution phase.

Red Zone Principle Six: Focus on Mechanics
The goal of this step is to identify those mechanical parts of the organization that must be altered in order for the blueprint to come to life. Once again, those mechanicals are (1) work processes, (2) the plant, equipment, and tools needed to support those work processes, and (3) the performance systems that help focus employee behavior on those processes and tools. For a change in competitive strategy, identifying and altering the mechanicals can be a major and difficult operation. The difficulty of the needed alterations will to a large degree be dependent on the amount of desired strategy change. For minor changes in strategy, the required alterations might be minimal, but for a major strategy change, the needed alterations will likely be significant.

• Work Processes – the detailed steps the organization takes to do what it is designed to do. For a strategy change, the critical processes to be altered are as follows:
  • The manufacturing, production, and operational processes that will produce the company’s products and deliver its services.
  • The marketing processes that will position the firm in the marketplace and the sales processes that will be used to obtain orders from specific customers.
  • The research and development (R&D) processes that support the technologies behind the work processes mentioned above.
    
    
• Plant/Equipment/Tools – those concrete items that are used by the firm’s employees to support its work processes. For a strategy change, there will need to be alteration of the company’s plant, equipment, and tools to support changes in work processes. While we can’t say which tools will need to be altered, we can say that such alterations will be required and are likely to be extensive.
  
  
• Performance Systems – the organization’s collection of roles, goals, training programs, and incentive structures will need to change to reflect the new strategy. The changes needed should tie directly back to the process alteration identified above.
  

Red Zone Principle Seven: Use Program and Project Management to Build to Print
The job of program management should be focused on getting the new strategy implemented by tackling the needed changes in the mechanical parts of the organization. Program management for strategy change will likely need to be formal and disciplined to ensure that the many changes required for strategy change are brought under management. Program management would need to identify and form multiple projects designed to achieve concrete results that will take the company to the blueprint. Our experience suggest that a formal program management structure, manned by an experienced manager reporting directly to the CEO, will make strategy change much easier to control. 

The projects that make up the strategy change program are best organized around changes in work processes, plant/equipment and tools, and then performance systems. My experience strongly suggests that each of these projects or sets of projects should be cross-functional in membership and orientation in order to have the broad view needed for comprehensive strategy change. Placing change projects inside functional organizations (such as marketing, sales, or manufacturing) should be avoided at all cost because of the bias normally found in such organizations. Functional organizations will either find that they are already doing a version of what the blueprint requires or that the blueprint cannot be executed at all at their level.

Consider formal risk management including contingency plans with pre-determined trigger points. Program manage just like an engineering/construction project or a big systems project, with a work plan: activities in a pre-determined sequence; deliverables; responsibilities; and target dates. Manage the entire program to ensure other impacts are managed as well as the specific strategy change. Plan for interim milestones to celebrate progress as well as end results.

Red Zone Principle Eight: Focus on Speed
Since the goal of a strategy change is to have a more positive impact on the marketplace, speed is critical. The idea is to come to market with a new strategy that gives the company an advantage, even if it is short term. The CEO, as the time keeper during the Red Zone, must drive the strategy change as fast as she can to gain the market advantage while not going so fast that the organization cannot effectively and efficiently make the needed internal changes. Time frame from a strategy change can range from a few months in a fast cycling industry that makes PCs to two years or more for a basic industry like aerospace or energy. The best way to set a time table seems to be to factor in the times it has taken other similar firms to make such changes and the CEO’s estimate of the organization’s change capacity.

Red Zone Principle Nine: Meet Special Needs of Workers
The special needs of workers who are a part of a Red Zone strategy change are rooted in the fact that they are frequently sprinting a marathon. Implementing a strategy takes intensive efforts for a long time, and workers wear out. Important consideration for workers during this Red Zone include:

• Making sure that workers on Red Zone project team have someone covering for them in their regular jobs,
• Ensuring that project personnel have job protection (i.e., that their jobs do not go away as a result of the shift in strategy),
• Ensuring that there is interim, public recognition for progress through the Red Zone, both individual recognition and team celebration for hitting important milestones,
• Ensuring that recognition includes all those contributing to the Red Zone strategy success, not just the select few,
• Making recognition visible and keeping it tied to progress metrics.

Last, but not least, highly visible leadership is needed from the CEO and other executives to show their continuing commitment and excitement about the strategy change. Leaders who lose interest, lose the strategy game.

Red Zone Principle Ten: Reward for Red Zone Performance
The incentives that we have seen work best drive off the goals for the strategy change and include:

• Market share (units and dollars),
• Competitive ratings (i.e., relative moves in rankings of products and services compared to competitors), and
• Profitability (by unit and totals for market segments).

Explicit recognition must be given to the strategy change goals along with the accomplishment of normal year-to-year goals. Incentive compensation amounts should be commensurate with the success of the strategy change maneuver and should be over and above normal incentive compensation. And ending this section on a negative note, I have not been a part of a strategy change that did not have a few managers and employees who, for whatever reason, could or would not support the change. Those unsupportive workers should be subject to loss of all incentives, demotions, or even terminations.

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