Strategy As Diligence PDF

Special Issue on Behavioral Strategy
Strategy as Diligence:
California Management Review
2017, Vol. 59(3) 162–190
© The Regents of the
University of California 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0008125617707975
https://doi.org/10.1177/0008125617707975
Strategy into Practice

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Thomas C. Powell1
SUMMARY
Researchers in behavioral strategy are producing new insights on strategic decision
making. At the same time, a few pioneering companies are discovering ways to
put behavioral strategy into practice. This article draws on behavioral research
and strategy practice to present an approach called diligence-based strategy. In
markets comprised of people rather than rational economic agents, the analysis of
competitive advantages matters less than the diligent execution of fundamental
activities. Diligence-based strategy offers an applied method for formulating
and executing strategy in organizations, showing how managers can leverage
technology and management discipline to drive business success in the twenty-first
century.
Keywords: diligence, behavioral strategy, strategy process, strategic management,

strategic planning, decision making
I
n 2014, Concha y Toro UK (CyT)—an importer-distributor of wines made
in Chile, Argentina, and California—faced a crisis in competitive strategy.
Global distributors with established brands were moving aggressively into
the U.K. market, smaller entrants were experimenting with new busi-
ness models, and downstream consolidators were shifting the balance of power
to a few large corporate retailers. Confronted with the threat of eroding mar-
ket share, declining profit margins, and an aging business model, CyT executives
knew something had to change.
But CyT did not follow the conventional path for managing large-scale
strategic change. Executives did not articulate a crisis or launch a strategic audit of
market trends or competitive threats, and the company made no attempt to revo-
lutionize its market strategy or business model. Instead, executives turned their
attention to a small number of ordinary business activities such as procuring
1University of Oxford, Said Business School, Oxford, UK
162
Strategy as Diligence: Putting Behavioral Strategy into Practice 163
inputs, managing customer relationships, and developing people. Then, leverag-

ing stakeholder relationships, Internet technologies, and social media, the com-
pany commissioned a new system for monitoring capabilities in fundamental
activities for CyT and its competitors. From this platform, executives developed
improved systems for goal-setting, measurement, and allocating resources to the
everyday fundamentals of business success.
This renewed commitment to mastering and executing the fundamentals
of business success—supported by empirical data, Internet technologies, and new
analytical methods—transformed strategy making at CyT. By deliberately shifting
management attention from the traditional abstractions of “big strategy” to the
daily realities of fundamental business practice, CyT executives generated a pow-
erful body of longitudinal data for sensing market shifts, tracking competitive
activity, setting priorities for investment, and defining new strategic initiatives.
According to one CyT executive, the shift was “a complete game-changer. Without
question, it revolutionized the way we think about strategy.”
Competitive and technological conditions in the twenty-first century are
changing the way companies conduct their strategy processes. The pace of com-
petition requires executives to strategize and act at the same time, to bring Internet
technologies into the strategy process, and to focus on a few highly leveraged
activities that drive business outcomes. In these conditions, some executives find
that the traditional building blocks of business strategy—analyzing industries,
choosing the scale and scope of the firm, positioning for competitive advantage,
and seeking differentiated resources and capabilities—have outlived their useful-
ness. The strategic shift now underway at CyT—and in larger consumer compa-
nies such as PepsiCo and Mars—heralds the arrival of something genuinely new,
a significant movement that transcends the particulars of any method or tech-
nique. It may indeed signal a landmark shift in the attitudes of top executives
toward the practice of strategic management.1
The magnitude of the signal is faint, but its outlines are clear. Executives no
longer believe in sustainable competitive advantage as a concept. They have little
patience for impressive platitudes or drawn-out strategy talk. They attend relent-
lessly to what they can control, while rejecting the notion that strategy and opera-
tional excellence, or strategy formation and execution, are separable things. They
rely more on measurement and evidence, and less on opinions and persuasion.
They view strategy as a continuous process involving decisions and actions, not as a
periodic process involving only decisions. They value not only hard data and quan-
tification but also organization culture, which they construe as shared meaning and
disciplined performance management. They challenge firm boundaries by embrac-
ing open organization, user communities, and social media. Learning through trial
and error, executives are carving out a novel set of strategy principles founded on
data, communication technology, and the relentless measurement and control of
the fundamental activities that determine business success.
In developing this approach, managers have paid less attention to academ-
ics and consultants than to practitioners in other competitive domains. For exam-
ple, one source for diligence-based strategy is the “moneyball” phenomenon, in
164 CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW 59(3)
which baseball executive Billy Beane used advanced statistics and activity moni-
toring to overthrow traditional methods of evaluating baseball talent.2 In the past
decade, these techniques have spread through business, sports, and other domains.
In professional golf, PGA and LPGA touring pros keep a close eye on GPS-enabled
competitive statistics for driving distance, driving accuracy, and average distance
from the pin, and on technology-enabled swing statistics for clubhead speed, spin
rate, and launch angle.3 Young golfers attend premium academies in Florida,
Arizona, and Dubai, and they study with world-class coaches, nutritionists, fitness
instructors, and psychologists. These players maximize performance by applying
the new power of technology, statistics, and sports science to the mastery of fun-
damental activities that have always determined success in golf: driving, iron play,
hazard play, putting, and the mental game.
Companies like CyT bring this approach to business competition by focus-
ing on the fundamental activities that drive success in any business: activities such
as developing new products, building stakeholder relationships, managing supply
chains, serving customers, and managing culture. This approach is “diligence-
based” because it values data, measurement, and behavioral perseverance above
large-scale strategic ambitions such as industry transformation and sustained
competitive advantage. It is “strategy” because it permeates every aspect of orga-
nizational strategy, from goal-setting and strategy formation through resource
allocation and day-to-day execution.
The principles of diligence-based strategy provide a method for putting
these ideas into practice. This article draws theoretical inspiration from cognitive
psychology and behavioral research, while rejecting the rationality and efficiency
assumptions that entered the theory and practice of strategic management through
economics. Assuming that markets are composed of human beings rather than
rational economic agents, diligence-based strategy shows the consequences of
bringing realistic assumptions about human behavior to the practice of strategic
management.
The Chess Syndrome

As practiced by large companies and taught in business schools, strate-
gic management is largely an art or science of the intellect. Corporations and
strategy consultancies employ sophisticated analytical tools for understanding
markets and internal resources, and MBA students learn general theories and
techniques for industry analysis, competitive positioning, and the internal analy-
sis of the firm. The tools of strategic analysis are widely disseminated and embed-
ded in the strategy processes of companies.
In using these tools, strategists are vulnerable to a state of mind that might
be called the “chess syndrome”: the belief that the purpose of strategy is to analyze
and choose strategic moves. Through training and experience, business strategists
learn to assess industry structures, recognize patterns in industry and competitive
trends, evaluate a company’s competitive position, develop and evaluate strategic
options, judge probabilities and payoffs of future events, and choose the scale,
scope, and competitive position of the firm. Because these tasks are cognitive and
analytical, they suggest parallels between business strategy and other domains in
which competitive positioning plays an essential role—most notably chess, in
which the analysis of competitive moves is paramount.4
The problem is that chess and business are very different games. Chess
grandmasters such as Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov have extraordinary
gifts for recognizing patterns and seeing deeply into potential lines of play.
However, these mental gifts constitute the whole game of chess. Choosing a good
chess move is intellectually complex but behaviorally trivial: when a decision is
made, the player reaches across the board and moves the piece to a new square.
Implementation is swift and unproblematic, and unexpected events never get in
the way. Chess players never think about strategy execution because chess strate-
gies never fall apart between thinking and doing.
Ease of execution distinguishes chess from domains of human activity that
require both thinking and doing, such as mountain climbing. In the past 60 years,
mountain climbers have discovered 18 different routes up Mount Everest. Most of
these routes have been tried more than once, and every experienced climber
knows which ones offer the greatest probability of success. As it happens, 99% of
climbers choose the Southeast Ridge from Nepal or the North Ridge from Tibet.
Statistics show that the Southeast Ridge yields slightly higher success rates and
fewer deaths, but taking weather and other factors into account, many climbers
prefer the North Ridge and the success rate there is reasonably high.
Unlike chessmasters, climbers of Mount Everest must consider strategy
execution, both during the climb and while planning the climb. In chess, there are
24 possible moves at the opening and 10.9 million possible positions by the sev-
enth move. In climbing Everest, there are only two feasible moves at the start and
movement is continuous and effortful. The two feasible paths up the mountain
are widely known, and climbers do not agonize over the choice of paths. Indeed,
most climbers choose their paths implicitly before deciding whether to go on the
expedition at all, knowing that the decision entails equifinality of choice (climbers
can reach the top on either path), randomness (which may hinder or assist the
climb), and continuous interaction with external forces (such as weather, Sherpas,
equipment, and other climbers).5
These characteristics radically alter the strategy process from beginning to
end. Success in climbing Everest does not depend on choosing the right path but
on the climber’s capacity to deal with the conditions of the actual climb. Climbers
still have to make choices, but the critical choices do not involve the analysis of
paths. They involve mastering the fundamentals of mountain climbing, assem-
bling and managing the right team of people, and anticipating and dealing with
the conditions of the climb.
Diligence-based strategy assumes that business strategy is not contempla-
tive like chess, but expeditionary like going up Everest. Problems in business strat-
egy are characterized by equifinality, randomness, and continuous interaction
with external forces. In business competition, the range of strategic options is

always constrained by external conditions and past choices, and executives sel-
dom face a large number of feasible paths; in many cases, the actual number of
feasible paths is one.6 In business strategy, good decisions sometimes fail, bad deci-
sions succeed, margins for error are large, and the conditions of implementation
can erase or reverse the core assumptions on which positioning decisions were
based. Companies do not fail every time an executive chooses the wrong path,
and it often happens that the human and economic conditions of competition—
poor implementation of a bad decision, poor decisions by competitors, a favorable
demand shift, a lucky change in government regulation, a corporate takeover—
allow executives to profit from their own mistakes.7
This does not mean that business strategists should never think about com-
petitive moves, or should avoid strategy tools like decision analysis or scenario
analysis. But they should recognize that analyzing and choosing competitive
moves do not determine a company’s success or failure, any more than choosing
a good exercise program determines a person’s level of fitness.8 Almost any fitness
program will get results if a person actually does the work, and no fitness program
will get results if they do not. When implementation is hard, success depends less
on chess-like mental virtuosity than on Everest-like diligence in executing a small
number of fundamental activities that are familiar to everyone who plays the
game. In allocating scarce top management attention, strategy executives should
remember that firm performance does not come from clever choices but from
relentless attention to the fundamental drivers of business success.
Behavioral Foundations
Theories and concepts in strategic management bear the strong imprint
of microeconomic theory.9 Strategy theories share with economics the assump-
tion that a company cannot beat its rivals by adopting widely available practices
that are known to improve business performance. Strategy theories assume that
homogeneous companies perform homogeneously, so a company cannot win by
imitating its competitors. It can try to do the same things better, but “strategy
is not operational excellence.”10 If a company adopts a profit-making practice,
its rivals—which are rational, observant, and open to new ideas—will copy the
practice and the market will return to the zero-profit equilibrium. The only way
a company can gain a performance edge is by building sustainable competitive
advantages protected by barriers to imitation.
These kinds of assumptions are useful to economists studying prices and
outputs in market competition. However, they are not empirical truths about
actual markets comprised of human beings. We know, for example, that nei-
ther individuals nor groups conform to the assumptions of rational actor the-
ory, that people imitate bad practices as well as good ones, and that companies
neither observe nor imitate each other in the ways assumed by economic
theory.11
Empirical evidence shows that companies often fail to copy the observ-
able best practices of other companies. The literature is vast, but a few examples
indicate the direction of the evidence.12 For example, Salter found that copper
mining companies took as long as 20 years to adopt widely available cost-saving
rail technologies, and Johnston found that management consultants produced
efficiency gains as high as 200% by helping their clients install boilerplate man-
agement control systems. Primeaux showed that the adoption of cost-efficient
technologies varied substantially among large electric utility providers, and
Kamberoglou and colleagues, in a study of Greek banks, found large differences
in the adoption of fundamental management practices. In a field experiment of
Indian textile producers, Bloom and colleagues offered free consulting services
and found that the adoption of basic business practices—quality control, inven-
tory management, and HR processes—produced large gains in productivity and
profitability compared with a control group; and in a sample of more than 700
companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany,
Bloom and Van Reenen found large variations in fundamental management
practices, reporting a “long tail of badly managed firms” with “surprisingly bad
management practices.”
According to conventional theories, these disparities in basic management
practices should not occur. A company should not beat the competition by per-
forming commodity-like activities that can be performed by anyone in the mar-
ket. Companies are not supposed to leave money on the ground or find it there.13
If this happened even to a moderate degree, competitive markets would be inef-
ficient and unpredictable. A company with competitive advantages might go out
of business by failing to implement “hygiene” activities, or a company without
competitive advantages might beat the competition by diligently implementing
ordinary activities. Such outcomes would contradict widely held beliefs about
strategic management theory and practice.
More realistic assumptions about market behavior can be found in the
emerging literature on behavioral strategy. According to Powell, Lovallo, and Fox,
behavioral strategy “aims to strengthen the empirical integrity and practical use-
fulness of strategy theory by grounding strategic management in realistic assump-
tions about human cognition, emotion, and social interaction.”14 Drawing insights
from cognitive and social psychology, behavioral strategy challenges the behav-
ioral assumptions of microeconomic theory by treating market efficiency and
decision rationality as empirical questions to be observed and tested in the actual
behavior of market participants.15
Behavioral research shows that human market participants do not behave
like rational economic agents. Real people are in many ways more impressive
than economic agents. They are capable of passion, benevolence, insight, and
perseverance. They have moral and aesthetic ideals, and they exhibit altruism,
trust, reciprocity, compassion, justice, loyalty, and love. As in the Moneyball story,
people in organizations make seemingly absurd creative leaps that can transform
an enterprise and alter the dynamics of market competition.
At the same time, real people make silly mistakes and misperceive obvious
features of their environments.16 They display envy, hubris, narcissism, and over-
confidence. People have limited memories and attention spans, unconscious
needs and drives they cannot control, and at the deepest neural level they are
hardwired for self-enhancement and short-term thinking. Research shows that
executives pay too little attention to competitors and too much attention to them-
selves, leading to competitive blind spots, delusional optimism, cognitive myopia,
and a “not invented here” mentality. At the group level, people are susceptible to
conformity, obedience, propaganda, envy, and stereotyping. At the organizational
level, companies drift imperceptibly into inertia and automatic behavior, taking
on rigid and politicized chains of command as well as cultural norms and ideolo-
gies that impede change. At higher levels of collectivity, entire sectors fail to per-
ceive new technologies or threats of entry, and executives follow the collective
sway of “the latest big thing.”
By bringing psychological realism to competitive market assumptions,
behavioral research provides an alternative view of the drivers of firm success and
failure. Real companies behave paradoxically, giving lip service to profit maximi-
zation while neglecting profit opportunities, committing unforced errors, and
blindly following what other companies are doing. Executives promote generous
programs of corporate philanthropy while committing moral, social, and political
blunders that are costless to avoid. Companies squander sustainable competitive
advantages in product design by their inability to perform basic tasks such as
delivering goods to customers. They support local communities while exploiting
their environments, and they incur reputational damage by violating simple
accounting rules and government regulations. They copy the best practices of
other companies and their worst practices too. The most successful enterprises
become inert, complacent, and unresponsive to external events.
Diligence-based strategy helps managers navigate competition and strategy
in markets composed of people. As one management scholar put it, much of what
we observe in markets does not stem from economic barriers or cognitive biases,
but involves a kind of “blockheadedness” that seems psychologically pointless—as
when a global automobile producer commits a blatant, self-sabotaging lapse in
moral judgment.17 By definition, companies cannot imitate the inimitable com-
petitive advantages of their rivals, but they can avoid making unforced moral
errors and destroying their own reputations. If unconscious drives and cognitive
biases are hardwired into the executive brain, then people cannot eliminate them,
but they can enact “nudges” and collective processes that mitigate shortcomings,
especially biases due to limitations of individual memory, attention, and learn-
ing.18 Seeing competitive markets from a behavioral point of view suggests that
market opportunities exist for companies that can avoid unforced errors and exe-
cute on the fundamentals of business success.
Research in behavioral strategy suggests that companies can be destroyed
by their own competitive strengths, by a kind of “curse of competitive advan-
tage.”19 For example, research shows that past success provides one of the most
fertile breeding grounds for individual and social biases, including executive
hubris, delusional optimism, overconfidence, competition neglect, learning myo-
pia, groupthink, corporate inertia, and cultural stagnation.20 Evidence suggests
that competitive advantages may carry the psychological seeds of their own
destruction, as when Polaroid founder Edwin Land’s technological obsessions,
which drove the early success of the company, blinded Polaroid to new market
developments in digital photography.21 Competitive advantages are psychologi-
cally salient to executives and tend to attract large resource allocations even when
returns to investment are declining or when disruptive innovators are making
them obsolete. Competitive strengths are good to have and companies should
cultivate them, but behavioral research reminds us that the pursuit of outsized
competitive advantages can impair the company’s vigilance against executive
hubris, market shifts, and systemic weaknesses in ordinary activities.22
The role of the chief executive is to maximize the performance of the enter-
prise. This task should not be displaced by something else, such as competitive
positioning or the pursuit of real or imagined competitive advantages. An execu-
tive’s primary task is to know the levers that drive business performance and to
operate those levers, whatever they may be. For a few companies, this may include
the exploitation of big competitive advantages. But how can companies without
competitive advantages improve competitive performance? And how can compa-
nies with competitive advantages avoid the curse of competitive advantage?
A Method for Diligence-Based Strategy

This section describes a framework and method for diligence-based strat-
egy. The method combines elements of the processes followed by companies like
CyT and Mars, along with frameworks the author has developed independently
over a period of years. This approach has been put into practice by companies in
industries such as financial services, professional services, and consumer goods,
and it is applicable to many others. It does not rely on assumptions specific to the
profit sector and has been employed in government and not-for-profit organiza-
tions as well as in developed and emerging economies.
The method is described under five headings: Activities, Strategic Capital,
Priorities, Dynamics, and Measurement.
Activities
In diligence-based strategy, the basic unit of analysis is the activity. An
activity is something people do, like developing new services, communicating
with suppliers, and processing insurance claims. When a company undertakes an
activity, the activity becomes a receptacle for executive attention, capital invest-
ment, resource allocation, strategic initiatives, learning, capability, and mastery.
As something people do, an activity is observable, measurable, and manageable.
It is not an intangible or unobservable asset, and it is not a “key success factor” or
any other kind of “factor.”
Managers can choose their industries and strategies, and can partially
determine what drives business success—for example, by choosing a particular
business model. But every domain of human activity operates within a deep
structure of competitive performance, a performance function that determines
whether a participant succeeds or fails.23 This function is not defined by partici-
pants but by the “rules of the game,” which reward some activities and punish
others. Players do not observe this function directly but discover it by experience,
learning, and trial and error. People may construe the performance function dif-
ferently (e.g., from a realist or interpretivist perspective), but the performance
function is exogenous, serving as a hard constraint on enterprise performance.24
The performance function is composed of fundamental activities: that is,
the crucial activities that drive competitive success. By a process of hypothesis
testing and trial and error, executives discover which activities drive performance
for the enterprise, the relative importance of these activities, and their responsive-
ness to different levels and types of investment.25
To initiate diligence-based strategizing, executives should set initial goals or
“anchor points” for the organization. Typically, this involves identifying enter-
prise-level goals for growth, profitability, innovation, and market coverage, to be
revisited later in the strategy process. To bridge these goals with fundamental
activities, executives should also develop a definition of the enterprise—that is, a
very short (and provisional) description of the nature and scope of the enterprise.
From these two foundations—goals and a definition of the enterprise—executives
can move forward with the diligence-based process.
To identify fundamental activities, executives should ask, What are the
fundamental activities that drive success in our business? According to the goals
and definitions we have set for the enterprise, what activities have we committed
ourselves to performing and mastering?
Fundamental activities must satisfy two criteria: mastery of the activities
contributes significantly to organizational performance; and managers can allo-
cate resources to the activities, measure them, and monitor outcomes. In applying
these criteria, executives should not expect to find a large number of fundamental
activities, and experience suggests that a “rule of five” provides a good balance of
breadth and depth for most enterprises. (In later stages, the method introduces
sub-activities that take the analysis to any desired level of detail.) If a company
has five fundamental activities, it is often the case that two or three have an exter-
nal orientation (such as serving customers), and two or three take an internal
view (such as managing internal culture).
The list of fundamental activities can include those unique to the organiza-
tion as well as generic activities that would drive success in any organization or
sector. For example, generic activities may include the following:
•• serving customers,
•• developing new products (or services),
•• improving brand recognition,

•• building external relationships,
•• benchmarking best practice,
•• managing the supply chain,
•• procuring inputs,
•• distributing products,
•• communicating,
•• developing our people,
•• managing technology,
•• managing internal systems and processes, and
•• managing costs.
It should also be noted that diligence-based strategy can be applied at any

unit of strategic analysis—for example, in a department, project, business unit, or
corporate parent. In corporate strategy, highly diversified firms like GE and Tata
Group have shown that it is possible—by focusing on a handful of fundamental
activities at the corporate level (e.g., evaluating and integrating acquisitions) and
the business-unit level (e.g., managing talent, installing new business systems)—
to create corporate value across a broad range of business units.26
Strategic Capital
Having identified a handful of fundamental activities, executives must
then assess how these activities work together to drive business success. This
constitutes the performance function of the enterprise. A company’s capabilities
in its fundamental activities work together according to the performance func-
tion—for example, by summation or multiplication—to create total strategic cap-
ital (TSC), which is the company’s total capability in its fundamental activities.
For ease of exposition, consider an organization that has two fundamental
activities, called Making (M) and Selling (S). In naming M and S as fundamental
activities, executives affirm that M and S work together to drive performance for
the company. This has specific consequences for the strategy process: M and S will
be treated as the company’s primary strategic variables, executives will set goals
for the mastery of M and S, the strategy process will determine resource alloca-
tions for M and S, and the company will commit itself to the continuous measure-
ment, monitoring, and management of M and S.
Diligence-based strategizing does not employ “box and arrow” models
involving linear or circular systems of relationships among activities, as in value
chain analysis or activity systems.27 These models can be useful, but the accurate
ones have many boxes and feedback loops and can be difficult to use in practice.
The simple ones are easy to use but offer fewer insights. The diligence-based
method takes a different approach, focusing on the form of the performance func-
tion through which activities create TSC for the enterprise.
In principle, fundamental activities could produce TSC in many ways: for

example, if M and S represent the company’s degree of mastery of Making and
Selling, the performance function could be additive (TSC = M + S), strongest link
[TSC = max(M,S)], multiplicative (TSC = M × S), or weakest link [TSC = min(M,S)].
In the additive function, the company could compensate for a deficiency in M by
becoming very good at S (or vice versa); in the strongest link function, the com-
pany could focus on one activity and completely ignore the other. Either of these
models might produce an impressive “competitive advantage” in a single
activity.
However, for most enterprises, the relevant form of performance function
is not additive or strongest link, but multiplicative.28 The multiplicative function
implies that activities are not substitutes, but work together in a complementary
and supportive way. For example, if the function is multiplicative, a company
cannot compensate for poor manufacturing by becoming extremely good at sell-
ing: if the company’s numerical ability for M is zero, then zero multiplies through
the performance system as a whole, and the company’s TSC is zero.29 In general,
the multiplicative function tends to reward balanced capabilities in the funda-
mental activities.
Multiplicative performance has large consequences for management prac-
tice. In the search for competitive advantage, most companies tend to overinvest
in strengths and underinvest in weaknesses. They do this in the mistaken belief
that competitive advantage comes from strengths instead of from the performance
system as a whole. However, this is almost never the case: in a multiplicative per-
formance system, any source of competitive advantage can be nullified by weak-
nesses in other activities.
In diligence-based strategy, it is important for managers to gain an intuitive
feel for multiplicative performance. This does not require a mathematical under-
standing, but rather an intuitive capacity for making resource allocation decisions in
a multiplicative system. This is best seen in a numerical example, as in Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows two companies, Ruby and Indigo. On a scale from 0 to 10,
where 0 denotes no capability in an activity and 10 denotes complete mastery,
Ruby rates 2 in Making and 8 in Selling, and Indigo rates 6 in Making and 4 in
Selling. Ruby has a relative advantage in Selling, and Indigo has a relative advan-
tage in Making. If Making and Selling are unweighted—that is, equally important
to performance—then an additive performance function will produce the same
TSC for the two companies (2 + 8 = 6 + 4 = 10). In a weakest link function, Indigo
will have more TSC (Indigo’s S = 4, Ruby’s M = 2); in a strongest link performance
function, Ruby will have more TSC (S = 8); and in a multiplicative function,
Indigo will have more TSC (6 × 4 = 24, compared with 2 × 8 = 16).
In the multiplicative performance function, Ruby should not allocate its
next unit of resource to its strongest activity (Selling): a one-unit capability
improvement in Selling would improve Ruby’s TSC from 16 (2 × 8) to 18 (2 × 9),
whereas a one-unit capability improvement in Making would improve Ruby’s
Figure 1. Comparing Ruby and Indigo.
Note: TSC = total strategic capital.

TSC from 16 (2 × 8) to 24 (3 × 8). Thus, the multiplicative system rewards bal-

anced capabilities in a company’s fundamental activities.
The “principle of balanced capabilities” can be hard to put into practice.
People prefer to invest in the capabilities that made them successful in the first
place, and organizational politics and cultural inertia make it hard for executives
to invest away from current strengths. Executives are also susceptible to cogni-
tive biases that promote continuity in investment decisions, such as the endow-
ment effect, loss aversion, confirmation bias, and the “curse of knowledge.”30 By
focusing on multiplicative performance, diligence-based strategy guides execu-
tives into a balanced consideration of the organization’s portfolio of fundamental
activities. Executives who gain an appreciation for multiplicative performance
can avoid common behavioral biases and make better overall judgments in
resource allocation.31
Priorities
Resource allocation decisions hinge on three factors: a company’s capabili-
ties in its fundamental activities, the relative strategic priorities of these activities,
and the extent to which the activities yield capability improvements in response
to new resource allocations. This is illustrated numerically in Appendix A, which
shows the relative priorities of Making and Selling for Ruby and Indigo, and
gives a numerical calculation of resource allocations for four performance func-
tions. As shown in Appendix A activities in a multiplicative system are comple-
mentary and mutually supportive, so that weak activities multiply through the
performance system as a whole. Appendix A and its accompanying tables show
how the principle of balanced capabilities is adjusted for the effects of strategic
priorities in relation to existing capabilities.
As an aid to management intuition, the conclusions in Appendix A can be
reduced to two relatively simple heuristics for allocating resources to activities in
a multiplicative system:
Heuristic 1: Managers should allocate resources to fundamental activities

in proportion to their relative priorities.
Heuristic 2: Managers should allocate above-normal resources to any
activity in which the company has low capability relative to its priority.
Using Heuristic 1, a company with two activities to which it has assigned

equal priority (.5) should allocate resources equally; if the priorities are .7 and .3,
the company should allocate resources 70% to the former, 30% to the latter. Most
of the time, this heuristic aligns with the intuitions of managers and is relatively
easy to follow.
However, a company’s capabilities can fall out of alignment with priori-
ties, especially if the company does not measure or monitor its fundamental
activities. In these circumstances, managers should not allocate resources
according to priorities. Heuristic 2 says that managers should allocate above-

normal resources to any activity that has fallen below its relative priority. This
was shown in Appendix A, where Ruby’s relative capability in Making (2/10, or
.20) had fallen short of its relative priority (.30). According to Heuristic 2, Ruby
maximizes TSC by allocating resources to Making, the activity with low capabil-
ity in relation to its priority.
In practice, it is Heuristic 2 that presents the most difficulty for manag-
ers. Executive attention is naturally drawn to the salience of existing strengths
and areas of high priority. However, an activity of moderate priority that has
become a weakness may deliver greater returns to investment. The intuition
to invest in strengths and top priorities can lead executives astray: sometimes
the best investments are neither strengths nor priorities, but neglected yet
fundamental activities in which priorities and capabilities have fallen out of
alignment. Heuristic 2 urges executives to evaluate the full range of funda-
mental activities, with a view to closing gaps between capabilities and priori-
ties. Investing in the highest priority activities would produce good decisions
if the performance function were additive, and indeed the resource allocation
heuristic for additive functions always follows Heuristic 1 (allocate resources to
the highest priority activity). But if the performance function is multiplicative,
resource allocations follow Heuristic 1 only if capabilities are perfectly aligned
with priorities, which is not generally the case; in most circumstances, man-
agers should compare relative capabilities with relative priorities and allocate
according to Heuristic 2 (see Appendix B).
These conclusions assume that all activities yield the same capability
improvements in response to resource allocations; in other words, that capability
improvements can be achieved at the same cost for all activities. In practice, this
is seldom the case: as companies improve their capabilities, further improvements
tend to become costlier and more difficult to achieve at the margin. In learning
and experience curves with a fixed upper limit (like a 0-10 scale), improving from
9 to 10 is harder than improving from 3 to 4. Thus, managers must consider the
comparative responsiveness of fundamental activities to new resource invest-
ments at the margin.
This problem corresponds exactly to the standard economic problem of
optimizing factors of production in the maximization of output.32 However, man-
agers do not need to perform these calculations. The essential point for managers
is that the effect of “diminishing marginal improvements” makes it even more
imperative that they attend carefully to weaknesses in fundamental activities: the
existence of low-cost, unexploited learning opportunities means that resources
often yield greater returns on investment—that is, greater relative increases in
TSC—when allocated to weaker activities.
Figure 2 shows how the diligence-based method displays capabilities for a
hypothetical consumer products company with five fundamental activities. The
figure uses three methods for displaying activities: column chart, radar chart, and
Figure 2. Charting diligence-based strategy.
bar chart. In practice, the author uses a column chart, but companies like CyT and
Mars use bar charts. The five activities are as follows: developing new products,
improving manufacturing productivity, developing internal culture, marketing to
consumers, and building relationships with retailers.
The three charts in Figure 2 present the same information in different for-
mats, indicating the extent of the company’s capability for each activity on a scale
from 0 (no capability) to 10 (complete mastery). The column and bar charts also
show TSC, which is calculated using the multiplicative function, weighted by pri-
orities.33 Relative priorities are represented as proportions and are shown in the
table at the bottom of Figure 2.
Dynamics
In determining resource allocations, managers should look for discrepan-
cies between the priority of activities and existing capabilities. If relative priori-
ties and capabilities are aligned, then Heuristic 1 applies and the company can
allocate resources in proportion to priority (adjusted for costs). If not, as in Table
1, managers should examine the magnitudes of any discrepancies and determine
which activities are candidates for above-normal resource allocation. In Table 1,
capabilities are significantly lower than priorities for two activities—developing
Table 1. Allocating Resources to Activities.
Relative Capabilities and Priorities
Fundamental Relative Relative Capability <

Activity Capability Capability Priority Priority?
Developing 4 0.14 0.20 

products
Improving 8 0.29 0.15

productivity
Developing culture 3 0.11 0.25 
Marketing to 8 0.29 0.10

consumers
Building 5 0.18 0.30 

relationships with
retailers
Sum 28 1.00 1.00
culture and building relationships with retailers—and also for developing new
products.34
Once the basic framework of activities and priorities is established, the dil-
igence-based method gives managers a versatile platform for tracking industry
and competitive dynamics, and for driving organizational change. The method’s
measurement disciplines (discussed below) are designed to bring the company
into closer contact with its customers and suppliers, allowing managers to sense
competitive shifts and anticipate new trends in business models and technologies.
Comparisons with rivals give managers new insights into the latest industry stan-
dards for quality and capability, showing them which companies are raising the
bar on fundamental activities (managers at CyT analyze competitors using charts
such as those in Figure 2, overlaying the profiles of rivals onto those of the orga-
nization). Indeed, diligence-based thinking encourages capability innovation by
prompting executives to monitor the frontiers of capability advance in its sector,
and by providing methods and measures for evaluating the impacts of new tech-
nologies and business practices.35
The method’s emphasis on activities leads naturally to discussions of orga-
nizational boundaries: if the company has a chronic weakness that responds
poorly to investment, the activity becomes a candidate for outsourcing; if the
company excels in an activity that responds well to investment, managers can
explore business models for maximizing its impacts; and if rivals are launching
new activities (such as building online communities for crowdsourcing), manag-
ers can consider reshaping the company’s profile of activities.
The diligence-based method facilitates concrete, evidence-driven strategy
conversations that connect market positions to the dynamic challenges of putting
them into practice. It can be used in conjunction with a broad range of established
techniques for analyzing options for strategic investment, including methods for
alternative generation, probability and payoff estimation, decision making, and
evaluation of uncertainty (such as scenario planning).36 The method provides a
strategic audit trail of capability improvement and an early warning system for
technological and market shifts. In practice, companies like CyT find that the ben-
efits of diligence-based strategizing increase over time, yielding dynamic compari-
sons with rivals and a longitudinal evidence record of resource allocations and
outcomes.37
Measurement
Diligence-based strategy requires systems of activity measurement and
performance management, along with management and communication prac-
tices for supporting these systems. These systems do not have to be costly or
highly formalized, or developed all at once. The culture and mission of some
organizations will suggest a lighter touch, whereas other organizations may take
a more robust approach. Whether the method is robust or light touch, the cru-
cial requirement is to place fundamental activities at the heart of organizational
strategy.
To put a measurement system into place, managers should identify the
component sub-activities that form the basis for the organization’s fundamental
activities. Sub-activities supply the observability and specificity required for effec-
tive measurement. For example, the fundamental activity “developing new prod-
ucts” may be composed of sub-activities such as researching new product
technologies, seeking ideas from customers, developing product prototypes, and
pilot-testing with customers. The activity “developing our people” may be com-
posed of sub-activities such as holding weekly meetings with employees, develop-
ing a career plan for each employee, involving people in strategy conversations,
and linking individual goals to organizational outcomes. As with fundamental
activities, five sub-activities seem to be a manageable number in practice (at CyT,
the number ranges from four to seven).
Sub-activities can be measured using the same numerical scales
employed for fundamental activities. This enables managers to combine the
capability ratings for sub-activities into a composite capability rating for the
fundamental activity as a whole. Thus, for example, CyT uses ratings for four
sub-activities—managing brand reputation, providing brand marketing sup-
port, creating innovative product packaging, and managing new product
launches—to derive a 0 to 100 rating for the fundamental activity “supporting
consumer marketing.”38
To obtain these ratings, CyT works closely with external consultants to
gather detailed feedback from external stakeholders.39 For the activity “sup-
porting consumer marketing,” the most crucial and informed stakeholders are
the five largest retail supermarkets in the United Kingdom through which CyT
distributes its products. Using web-based surveys of multiple respondents in

each retailer—supported by follow-up contacts by phone, Skype, or face to
face—CyT managers work with the consulting team to compile a detailed pro-
file of CyT’s capabilities for each sub-activity. At the same time, the surveys
produce comparative ratings for CyT’s seven largest competitors, allowing
managers to use comparative bar charts and other forms of analysis. Retailers
also receive feedback from the surveys, which improves data reliability and
retailer response rates.
In diligence-based strategy, managers should use every available technol-
ogy and data source to compile data on the company’s activities. This varies by
sector and from one activity to another. For externally facing activities, sources
include quantitative data from online databases, a dedicated website for data
gathering, web surveys, blogs, social media feeds, and data provided by consultan-
cies and industry experts; for internally facing activities, they include blogs, anon-
ymous surveys, open forums, and data obtained in performance appraisal systems;
and for activities related to efficiency or productivity, they include numerical data
for input, output, and defect rates. Companies lacking a strong track record of
customer or stakeholder engagement can use diligence-based strategy as the cata-
lyst for launching new programs of technology-enabled communication with cus-
tomers and suppliers.
An organization that has four sub-activities for each of five fundamental
activities will collect data for 20 sub-activities. This is achievable for most organi-
zations. For presentation, each fundamental activity is charted, and these charts
are supported by charts for each sub-activity. This becomes the documentation for
resource allocation and strategic decision making. At CyT, each fundamental
activity has its own chart, which gives the ratings for each sub-activity (like the
horizontal bar chart in Figure 2). As supporting documentation, each sub-activity
has a chart showing how the sub-activity was measured. These pages, along with
summary charts and conclusions, constitute the playbook for diligence-based
strategizing at CyT.
Summary and Conclusion

Diligence-based strategy offers a theoretically grounded philosophy
of strategic management as well as an applied method for formulating and
executing strategy in organizations. Drawing on psychology and behavioral
strategy, the theory and method are founded on the premise that organiza-
tions achieve superior performance not by thinking about how to obtain
competitive advantages but by the thoughtful doing of activities fundamen-
tal to success.
Diligence-based strategy did not appear all at once, and it is still in
development.40 Its foundations reach at least to the 1950s, when social scientists
Herbert Simon and James March introduced concepts such as bounded rationality,
group identification, and political bargaining to the study of organizations. In the

1960s, Harvard economist Harvey Leibenstein developed the concept of
“X-inefficiency,” showing the prevalence of inefficiency in firms and competitive
markets. Behavioral economists like Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman chal-
lenged mainstream economic assumptions about decision rationality, showing the
impacts of cognitive biases on strategic decision making. In strategic management
research, scholars observed the misleading effects of adopting the efficiency and
equilibrium assumptions of economic theory, and Bromiley and Rau developed a
“practice-based view” of strategy. For executive strategists, Amar Bhide wrote
about the importance of “hustle,” Pfeffer and Sutton highlighted the “knowing-
doing gap,” Frery and colleagues wrote on “the innovative use of ordinary
resources,” and executives such as Lou Gerstner of IBM, Andy Grove of Intel, and
Larry Bossidy of AlliedSignal wrote best-selling books linking strategy to the exe-
cution of fundamentals.
It is possible to argue from historical evidence that the most successful
companies—from GE to Intel to Google—have always practiced diligence-based
strategy, and that scholarly work in behavioral strategy has come very late to the
game. The diligence-based approach works in practice because it does not demand
the impossible from executives, but focuses on things managers can actually con-
trol. Executives cannot control genius, luck, or the imitation of inimitable com-
petitive advantages. But they can produce outcomes indistinguishable from
genius, luck, or competitive advantages by focusing diligently on things they can
control.
The diligence-based approach does not reject traditional approaches to
strategy, but urges managers to think carefully about how these methods are
used. Economics-based methods neglect the human and behavioral realities
of strategic management, and they are poorly adapted to environments char-
acterized by social complexity, political uncertainty, and economic ineffi-
ciency. In prioritizing the pursuit of competitive advantages, older methods
focus executive attention on the pure cognition of goal-setting, understand-
ing industry structures, planning competitive positions, and analyzing
resource advantages. By focusing executive attention on people and behavior,
diligence-based strategy helps executives drive performance in human envi-
ronments that reward diligence, perseverance, and a capacity for getting
things done.
From an economic point of view, someone might ask: Is diligence-based
strategy really strategy? Isn’t strategy concerned with setting goals, choosing
products, setting price and quality levels, deciding whether to enter markets, and
making acquisition decisions? Isn’t strategy “big”?
From a diligence-based perspective, strategy is what executives do to create
successful outcomes, whatever this may entail. If success entails goal-setting and
making big decisions, then this is what executive strategists should do. In human
markets characterized by equifinality of choice, randomness, and difficult and
uncertain implementation, success tends to depend less on “big strategy” than on

the relentless management of disciplined action.
The purpose of diligence-based strategy is to help managers develop and
deliver effective strategies. It is not an operational or tactical program, a checklist
of factors, or a boxes-and-arrows system of transactions. Diligence-based strategy
can equally promote market disruption or manufacturing productivity, market
exploration or resource exploitation, radical innovation or systems efficiency.
Ironically, many executives find that only by thinking “small”—focusing on busi-
ness fundamentals rather than big strategic moves—can a company discover and
enact the big moves traditionally associated with competitive strategy, such as
developing new technologies and capturing market opportunities. If the method
seems more operational than conventional strategy models, the problem may
ultimately rest with conventional models. Strategy is about creating successful
outcomes, and it is possible that the old dogma that separated strategy from oper-
ations, and strategy formation from strategy execution, has outlived its usefulness
in strategic management.
The diligence-based method is not tied to a particular industry or geography,
or to the profit sector. It can be used in all organizations and in subunits at all levels.
It is adaptable to the pursuit of financial or nonfinancial goals. Technology-enabled
measurement of fundamental activities provides a powerful guide and “nudge” to
human performance in every domain of activity. The diligence-based approach facil-
itates strategy making in business, sports, and politics, and it can help individuals
plan for personal or career success. In all areas of life, diligence-based strategy points
the way to superior performance by showing people how to capture opportunities in
a world that consists of other people very much like themselves.
Appendix A
Allocating Resources to Activities
Table A1 shows the relative priorities of Making and Selling for Ruby and
Indigo, and gives a numerical calculation of resource allocations for four perfor-
mance functions. These include two of the original four functions (Additive and
Multiplicative) and two new functions that weight the capabilities by relative
priority (Weighted Additive and Weighted Multiplicative).
To produce a numerical index for total strategic capital (TSC) that follows
the original 0 to 10 scale, all functions are averaged.41 Thus, the additive function
is the average of the two capabilities, and the weighted additive is the weighted
average. Similarly, the multiplicative function is the multiplicative average of the
two capabilities (the “geometric mean”), and the weighted multiplicative is the
weighted multiplicative average (the “weighted geometric mean”).42 Readers
interested in the detailed calculations will find them in Table A1.
Turning to the resource allocation decision, Table A2 examines the alter-

natives for Ruby, comparing the results for a one-unit increase of Ruby’s capa-
bility in Making or Selling. Table A2 shows that if the performance function is
additive, it does not matter whether Ruby gains a one-unit capability in Making
or Selling: the “New TSC” column shows that either will increase TSC to 5.50,
an increase of 10%. If the performance function is weighted additive, Ruby
prefers to gain a new unit of capability in Selling: this increases TSC from 6.20
to 6.90 (+11.3%), whereas a new unit of capability in Making increases TSC
from 6.20 to 6.50 (+4.8%).
In either of the multiplicative functions, Ruby prefers to gain a new unit of
capability in Making. Despite the fact that Ruby prioritizes Selling (priority = .7)
over Making (priority = .3), and has more capability in Selling than Making, it
should allocate resources to Making. In a multiplicative system, weak activities
multiply through the performance system as a whole.
Table A1. Computing TSC for Ruby and Indigo.
Ruby Indigo
Fundamental
Activity Capability Priority Capability Priority
Making 2 0.30 6 0.20
Selling 8 0.70 4 0.80
Performance TSC TSC

Function Index TSC Calculation Index TSC Calculation
Additive (average)a 5.00 10 ÷ 2 = 5 5.00 10 / 2 = 5
Weighted additive 6.20 2(.30) + 8(.70) = 6.20 4.40 6(.20) + 4(.80) = 4.40
(weighted average)b
Multiplicative 4.00 (2).50 × (8).50 = 4.00 4.90 (6).50 × (4).50 = 4.90

(multiplicative average)c
Weighted multiplicative 5.28 (2).30 × (8).70 = 5.28 4.33 (6).20 × (4).80 = 4.33
(weighted
multiplicative average)d

aAdditive (average) = average of the two capabilities.
bWeighted additive (weighted average) = weighted average of the two capabilities.
cMultiplicative (multiplicative average) = product of the two capabilities, equally weighted by exponents (“geo-
metric mean”).
dWeighted multiplicative (weighted multiplicative average) = product of the two capabilities, exponents weight-
ed by priority (“weighted geometric mean”).

Table a2. Resource Allocations for Ruby.
Performance Old New TSC TSC %

Function Making Selling TSC TSC Calculation Change Change
TSC Adding One Unit of Capability in MAKING.
Additivea 3 8 5.00 5.50 (3 + 8) / 2 +.50 10.0

= 5.50
Weighted 3 8 6.20 6.50 3(.30) + 8(.70) +.30 4.8

additiveb = 6.50
Multiplicativec 3 8 4.00 4.90 (3).50 × (8).50 +.90 22.5

= 4.90
Weighted 3 8 5.28 5.96 (3).30 × (8).70 +.68 12.9

multiplicatived = 5.96
TSC Adding One Unit of Capability in SELLING.
Additivea 2 9 5.00 5.50 (2 + 9) / 2 +.50 10.0

= 5.50
Weighted 2 9 6.20 6.90 2(.30) + 9(.70) +.70 11.3

additiveb = 6.90
Multiplicativec 2 9 4.00 4.24 (2).50 × (9).50 +.24 6.0

= 4.24
Weighted 2 9 5.28 5.73 (2).30 × (9).70 +.45 8.5

multiplicatived = 5.73

aAdditive (average) = average of the two capabilities.
bWeighted additive (weighted average) = weighted average of the two capabilities.
cMultiplicative (multiplicative average) = product of the two capabilities, equally weighted by exponents (“geo-
metric mean”).
dWeighted multiplicative (weighted multiplicative average) = product of the two capabilities, exponents weight-
ed by priority (“weighted geometric mean”).
Appendix B
Additive and Multiplicative Performance
Managers should understand the difference between resource allocation
in Additive and Multiplicative systems. An Additive function is illustrated below
(Figure B1). Goldenrod Company has two activities—developing new products
and serving customers—and managers have assigned them equal priority. The
company’s starting capabilities are shown at point G (3,1).
If the company could gain six new units of capability, any point between
A and B would be achievable. How should it apportion these units between
developing new products and serving customers? In an Additive function, it does
not matter: Goldenrod will achieve ten total units of capability (total strategic
capital [TSC] = 5.0) for any allocation on line segment AB.
Figure B1. Additive performance
A Multiplicative function is shown in the curve below (Figure B2). How

should Goldenrod Company apportion six new units of capability? As before,
any point on line segment AB is achievable. However, only one allocation—the
allocation that takes them to point C—allows Goldenrod to achieve TSC = 5. Any
other allocation places the company on a lower TSC curve.
To reach point C, Goldenrod must allocate two units to developing new
products and four units to serving customers; then its capabilities in the two
activities will be (5,5) and TSC will be 5.
Resource allocations depend on the priorities of activities and the com-
pany’s existing capabilities. Goldenrod’s activities had equal priority, but its capa-
bilities (3,1) were unequal. TSC could only be maximized by allocating more
resources to the weaker capability.
Figure B2. Multiplicative performance

Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Concha y Toro UK (CyT) man-
agement team, especially Nicola Hale and Alastair Collier, who gave gen-
erously of their time and supplied access to the CyT strategy process and
documentation.
Author Biography
Thomas C. Powell is Professor of Strategy at the Saïd Business School, University
of Oxford (email: [email protected]).
Notes
1. The new approach borrows some elements from existing strategy and operational frameworks,
recombining them in new ways. For example, CyT’s (Concha y Toro UK) emphasis on activi-
ties is reminiscent of value chains and activity systems, and its emphasis on measurement and
execution resembles Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, and the balanced scorecard
system. See M. E. Porter, Competitive Advantage (New York, NY: Free Press, 1985); M. E. Porter,
“What Is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review, 74/6 (November/December 1996): 61-78; R. S.
Kaplan and D. P. Norton, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action (Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press, 1996). At the same time, the new approach has its own theory,
method, and behavioral assumptions, as described in this article.
2. M. Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2003).
3. For example, see T. Hulse, “A Whole New Ball Game?” Business Life, May 2015, pp. 30-31.
4. See, for example, G. Kasparov, How Life Imitates Chess (London: William Heinemann, 2007).
5. Equifinality applies when more than one path leads to the same end. The concept was intro-
duced to systems theory by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and is a standard concept in open sys-
tems theories of organization. See L. von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory (New York, NY:
George Braziller, 1968); D. Katz and R. L. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations, 2nd
ed. (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1978). On the role of randomness in strategy and
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American Economic Review, 96/3 (June 2006): 694-719. We are grateful to an anonymous ref-
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good path does not guarantee success, but choosing a truly bad one (e.g., a hazardous path
up Mount Everest) could guarantee disaster.
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H. Bazerman and D. A. Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 7th ed. (New York,
NY: Wiley & Sons, 2009); G. Loewenstein, Exotic Preferences: Behavioral Economics and Human
Motivation (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007); Vermeulen, op. cit.
17. The 2015 Volkswagen scandal, in which executives manipulated the testing of carbon mon-
oxide emissions. Also see T. C. Powell, “Strategy, Execution and Idle Rationality,” Journal of
Management Research, 4/2 (2004): 77-98.
18. R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); D. Halpern, Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small
Changes Can Make a Big Difference (London: W. H. Allen, 2015); C. Heath, R. P. Larrick, and
J. Klayman, “Cognitive Repairs: How Organizations Compensate for the Shortcomings
of Individual Learners,” Research in Organizational Behavior, 20 (1998): 1-37; R. P. Larrick,
“Debiasing,” in Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, ed. D. J Koehler and N.
Harvey (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004): 316-337; S. Postrel and R. P. Rumelt, “Incentives,
Routines, and Self-Command,” Industrial and Corporate Change, 1/3 (1992): 397-425; P. E.
Tetlock, “Cognitive Biases and Organizational Correctives: Do Both Disease and Cure Depend
on the Politics of the Beholder?” Administrative Science Quarterly, 45/2 (June 2000): 293-326.
19. For example, see A. Chatterjee and D. C. Hambrick, “Executive Personality, Capability Cues,
and Risk Taking: How Narcissist CEOs React to Their Successes and Stumbles,” Administrative
Science Quarterly, 56/2 (June 2011): 202-237; B. M. Staw, P. I. McKechnie, and S. M. Puffer,
“The Justification of Organizational Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 28/4
(December 1983): 582-600; M. H. Bazerman and W. D. Watkins, Predictable Surprises: The
Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004);
B. M. Staw, “The Escalation of Commitment to a Course of Action,” Academy of Management
Review, 6/4 (October 1981): 577-587; D. Miller, The Icarus Paradox: How Exceptional Companies
Bring about Their Own Downfall (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 1992); J. Pfeffer and C. T.
Fong, “Building Organization Theory from First Principles: The Self-Enhancement Motive
and Understanding Power and Influence,” Organization Science, 16/4 (July 2005): 372-388;
M. A. Hayward and D. C. Hambrick, “Explaining the Premiums Paid for Large Acquisitions:
Evidence of CEO Hubris,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 42/1 (March 1997): 103-127; A.
Chatterjee and D. C. Hambrick, “It’s All about Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and
Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 52/3
(September 2007): 351-386.
20. See note 17.
21. Miller, op. cit.
22. See Denrell and Liu, op. cit. On the decline of sustainable competitive advantages, see R. A.
D’Aveni, G. Battista Dagnino, and K. G. Smith, “The Age of Temporary Advantage,” Strategic
Management Journal, 31/13 (December 2010): 1371-1385; R. A. D’Aveni, Hypercompetition:
Managing the Dynamics of Strategic Maneuvering (New York, NY: Free Press, 1994).
23. This is comparable with adaptation on rugged landscapes; for example, see D. A. Levinthal,
“Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes,” Management Science, 43/7 (July 1997): 934-950; J.
Rivkin and N. Siggelkow, “Organizational Sticking Points on NK Landscapes,” Complexity, 7/5
(2002): 31-43.
24. See B. Fay, “Critical Realism?” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20/1 (March 1990):
33-41; K. E. Weick, Making Sense of the Organization (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). In the
above article, Fay compares the process of human discovery with playing the board game
Mastermind. In Mastermind, the player attempts to discover a preselected code consisting
of four pegs of different colors, which are covered by a shield. On each turn, the player
guesses the code and receives information about the correctness of guesses. Fay writes, “The
cosmos consists of an unknown but causally operative structure which is objectively ‘there’;
science is the attempt to replicate this structure through a process of hypothesis formation
and testing; and a true theory is one which exactly duplicates the pre-existing structure” (p.
36). Both Fay and Karl Weick argued that people in the real world cannot be sure that the
“underlying code” actually exists, or if it exists, whether people can discover it. Fay writes,
“There isn’t any One True Map of the earth, of human existence, of the universe, or of
Ultimate Reality, a Map supposedly embedded inside these things; there are only maps we
construct to make sense of the welter of our experience, and only us to judge whether these
maps are worthwhile for us or not” (p. 38). The diligence-based approach can accommo-
date either a realist interpretation (“there is a real underlying code”) or a constructionist or
“pragmatist” interpretation (“the underlying code is not objectively real, but constructed by
people as an aid and analogy for problem-solving”).
25. Under equifinality of choice, industry landscapes allow more than one path to high perfor-
mance. For example, a firm might achieve the same success using a strategy of (a) equally
weighted capabilities in distributing and marketing, or (b) unequally weighted capabilities in
producing and serving customers. Diligence-based strategy assumes that executives can choose
(a) or (b) as the company’s strategy or business model (or they can choose others), and they
can choose freely among all feasible allocations of resources. However, as in economic theory,
executives cannot in the short run choose the extent to which any business model is rewarded
by the environment. This is a feature of the environment, which decision makers must learn by
allocating resources to activities and observing their effects. In practice, the performance func-
tion is both uncertain (at any point in time) and potentially unstable (over time). Executives
can reduce uncertainty by engaging in market search, gathering information from a variety of
sources, and observing the effects of resource allocations (as described in the text).
26. Jack Welch’s philosophy of “Ponder less and do more” is consistent with diligence-based
strategy. See J. Welch with S. Welch, Winning (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2005), 166.
27. See, for example, J. Sterman, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex
World (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2000); J. W. Forrester, Industrial Dynamics (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1961); Porter, Competitive Advantage; and Porter, “What Is Strategy?”
28. In a multiplicative performance function, activities complement each other, whereas
in an additive function they are substitutes. For example, if more efficient production
increases the payoffs to a sales training program, the performance function is multiplica-
tive. Complementarity in organizations is discussed in J. Roberts, The Modern Firm (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007). An argument for the multiplicative function in human com-
petition can be found in D. K. Simonton, “Talent and Its Development: An Emergenic and
Epigenetic Model,” Psychological Review, 106/3 (July 1999): 435-457 (see also Simonton’s
sources on multiplicative performance and “emergenic” processes, p. 438). The standard
economic framing for multiplicative factors of production is the “Cobb-Douglas production
function” and its variants. There is a vast theoretical and empirical literature, the original
statement being C. W. Cobb and P. H. Douglas, “A Theory of Production,” American Economic
Review, 18/Supplement (1928): 139-165. Although the most common performance function
in organizations is multiplicative, hybrid combinations are possible: for example, a multipli-
cative function with one additive activity.
29. This differs from a weakest link model, in which total strategic capital (TSC) always matches
the company’s capability in its worst activity. For example, if company A has capabilities
rated 2 and 3, and company B has capabilities rated 1 and 9, company A is the higher per-
former in a weakest link model (2 is the lowest rated activity), and company B is the higher
performer in a multiplicative model (1 × 9 = 9 exceeds 2 × 3 = 6).
30. On ideologies, politics, and organizational barriers to strategic change, see S. Jonsson and
P. Regner, “Normative Barriers to Imitation: Social Complexity of Core Competences in a
Mutual Fund Industry,” Strategic Management Journal, 30/5 (May 2009): 517-536; N. Brunsson,
“The Irrationality of Action and Action Rationality: Decisions, Ideologies and Organizational
Actions,” Journal of Management Studies, 19/1 (January 1982): 29-44; A. D. Meyer and W.
H. Starbuck, “Interactions between Politics and Ideologies in Strategy Formation,” in New
Challenges to Understanding Organizations, ed. K. Roberts (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1993), pp.
99-116. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton argued that companies do many things that effec-
tively sabotage their own efforts to learn and improve, such as fostering cultures in which
people feel pressured and afraid to fail, and “dumping technology on the problem,” that is,
adopting formal knowledge management programs that decouple learning from tacit forms of
human interaction and organizational values. Their prescriptions for learning—for example,
encouraging experimentation and embedding change programs in organizational culture and
values—apply equally to the diligence-based method. See J. Pfeffer and R. Sutton, “Knowing
‘What’ to Do Is Not Enough: Turning Knowledge into Action,” California Management Review,
42/1 (Fall 1999): 83-108. On loss aversion, see A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, “Loss Aversion
in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106/4
(November 1991): 1039-1061. On confirmation bias, see D. T. Gilbert, D. S. Krull, and P. S.
Malone, “Unbelieving the Unbelievable: Some Problems in the Rejection of False Information,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59/4 (October 1990): 601-613. On the “curse
of knowledge,” a term credited to behavioral economist Robin Hogarth, see C. Camerer, G.
Loewenstein, and M. Weber, “The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental
Analysis,” Journal of Political Economy, 97/5 (October 1989): 1232-1254. The intuitive version of
the argument is that people find it hard to unlearn what they already know, or to take actions
that require ignoring what they know (or think they know).
31. How can managers know if their organization’s performance function is multiplicative? The
best way to evaluate the function is to ask, Would a capability reduction in one of our core
activities reduce our effectiveness in other activities? Note that this is not the same as ask-
ing whether a capability reduction in a core activity would make the company worse off, to
which the answer should be “yes” (if a manufacturer becomes less capable of procuring qual-
ity components, this will hurt the company even if the performance function is additive). But
if the same decline hurts the company secondarily by reducing the effectiveness or efficiency
of the manufacturing process (say, due to higher error rates), or makes the sales task more
costly (due to lower product quality), or creates a ripple effect in customer service (due to rep-
utational decline or higher warranty costs), then the system is multiplicative. This means that
lower capability in one activity has negative spillover effects for other activities, reducing their
effectiveness and multiplying through the performance system as a whole. In a similar way,
an improved capability in one activity can have positive spillovers for other activities and posi-
tive multiplier effects for the performance system as a whole. From a behavioral point of view,
managers can ask, How effectively could we carry on our business without direct communica-
tion or coordination across core activities? Could our activities be conducted in a “stand-alone”
or purely modular way? The multiplicative performance function assumes that core activities
are not modular but complementary, requiring communication and behavioral coordination.
32. The standard treatment for two variables in microeconomics is to represent relative input
costs as a line overlaid on the map of production isoquants, with optimal production at the
point of tangency (see Appendix A). These calculations can be performed algebraically for
any number of activities. On the contrary, the diligence-based method does not require these
kinds of mathematical calculations. The main point for managers is to appreciate that cost
trade-offs play a role in resource allocation decisions in a multiplicative system.
33. Scaling from 0 to 10 is not essential; CyT uses a scale from 0 to 100, and the minimum could
be set at one rather than zero.
34. Quantitative analysis using the weighted multiplicative model, assuming equal costs of capa-
bility improvement for all activities, shows that one unit of added capability has the greatest
impact on TSC when applied to developing culture (TSC rises by .36), followed by building
relationships with retailers (+.27), developing new products (+.22), improving productivity
(+.09), and marketing to consumers (+.06).
35. For example, if distributing products is a fundamental activity for company A, and com-
pany B introduces a more efficient system for distributing products, the “bar” for competi-
tive mastery rises and company A’s relative capability declines. Thus, a company’s capability
can decline from 6/10 to 4/10 even if its absolute capability is unchanged, or its capability
can remain the same despite absolute improvements in capability. This “Red Queen Effect”
requires executives to attend closely to the frontiers of capability mastery in its sector.
36. For example, see R. Keeney, “Value-Focused Thinking: Identifying Decision Opportunities
and Creating Alternatives,” European Journal of Operational Research, 92 (1996): 537-549; R.
Keeney, J. Hammond, and H. Raiffa, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions
(Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998); D. Lovallo and O. Sibony, “Distortions
and Deceptions in Strategic Decisions,” McKinsey Quarterly, No. 1, February 2006, pp. 19-29;
P. Schoemaker, “Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking,” MIT Sloan Management
Review, 36/2 (Winter 1995): 25-40; P. Schoemaker and P. Tetlock, “Taboo Scenarios: How to
Think about the Unthinkable,” California Management Review, 54/2 (Winter 2012): 5-24.
37. This is consistent with the concept of “dynamic capabilities” but derived from differ-
ent assumptions. Diligence-based strategy is not trying to explain “why certain firms build
competitive advantage in regimes of rapid change” (D. J. Teece, G. Pisano, and A. Shuen,
“Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management,” Strategic Management Journal, 18/7
(August 1997): 516), and it does not employ the distinction between “baseline capabilities”
and “dynamic capabilities.” In diligence-based strategy, managers maximize performance
not by creating “higher order” capabilities but by managing fundamental activities. This is
perhaps more consistent with the Eisenhardt-Martin view of dynamic capabilities. See, for
example, Teece et al., op. cit., pp. 509-533; D. J. Teece, “Explicating Dynamic Capabilities:
The Nature and Microfoundations of (Sustainable) Enterprise Performance,” Strategic
Management Journal, 28/13 (December 2007): 1319-1350; K. M. Eisenhardt and J. A. Martin,
“Dynamic Capabilities: What Are They?” Strategic Management Journal, 21/10-11 (October/
November 2000): 1105-1121; M. Peteraf, G. Di Stefano, and G. Verona, “The Elephant in
the Room of Dynamic Capabilities: Bringing Two Diverging Conversations Together,” Strategic
Management Journal, 34/12 (December 2013): 1389-1410.
38. When combining ratings for sub-activities, managers can use their own discretion in deciding
the method. The simplest method is to assign equal priority to the sub-activities and average
the ratings; a better method is to weight the sub-activities according to priority and use a
weighted average (CyT uses this method); if the sub-activities support each other in a multipli-
cative system, the weighted multiplicative method can also be used, as discussed earlier.
39. Consultants can play a number of roles in the diligence-based method, including process
facilitation, research design, data gathering, analysis, interpretation, and providing templates
for presentation. As the process evolves, companies find that they can bring more of the
activity in-house.
40. References for this paragraph are as follows: H. A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study
of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1947);
J. G. March and H. A. Simon, Organizations (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1958); H. A.
Simon, “Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations,” American Economic Review,
69/4 (September 1979): 493-513; R. M. Cyert and J. G. March, A Behavioral Theory of the
Firm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963); H. Leibenstein, “Allocative Efficiency vs.
‘X-Efficiency,’” American Economic Review, 56/3 (June 1966): 392-415; H. Leibenstein, Beyond
Economic Man (Cambridge MA: Harvard Business Press, 1976); Kahneman op. cit.; Denrell et al.,
“The Economics of Strategic Opportunity”; Denrell, op. cit.; P. Bromiley, Behavioral Foundations of
Strategic Management (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); P. Bromiley and C. Papenhausen, “Assumptions
of Rationality and Equilibrium in Strategy Research,” Strategic Organization, 1/4 (November
2003): 413-437; P. Bromiley and D. Rau, “Towards a Practice-Based View of Strategy,” Strategic
Management Journal, 35/8 (August 2014): 1249-1256; A. Bhide, “Hustle as Strategy,” Harvard
Business Review, 64/5 (September/October 1986): 121-129; J. Pfeffer and R. I. Sutton, The
Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Business School Press, 1999); J. Pfeffer and R. I. Sutton, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and
Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business
School Press, 2006); F. Frery, X. Lecocq, and V. Warnier, “Competing with Ordinary Resources,”
MIT Sloan Management Review, 56/3 (Spring 2015): 69-77; L. Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t
Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2003);
A. Grove, High Output Management (New York, NY: Random House, 1983); L. Bossidy and R.
Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2002).
41. Averaging keeps the range of TSC within the 0 to 10 scale of the underlying capabilities.
Thus, if the variables have values 6 and 8, the sum is 14, which is outside the 0 to 10 scale.
Averaging the scores preserves the additive logic while making the scale more intuitive.
42. Intuitively, an “additive mean” (or “arithmetic mean”) implies that the two variables are
perfect substitutes for each other (to raise the mean, it does not matter which variable is
increased); a “geometric mean” implies that the two variables are not perfect substitutes
(increasing the lower value gives a different mean than increasing the higher value).
Arithmetically, the “additive mean” adds the values and divides by the number of values,
and the “geometric mean” multiplies the values and raises them to an exponent equal to 1
/ (the number of values). If the two values are 8 and 2, the additive mean is (8 + 2) / 2 = 5;
the geometric mean is (8 × 2)½ (square root of 16) = 4.
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Special Issue on Behavioral Strategy

Putting Behavioral Reprints and permissions:

Strategy into Practice

Keywords: diligence, behavioral strategy, strategy process, strategic management,

1University of Oxford, Said Business School, Oxford, UK

inputs, managing customer relationships, and developing people. Then, leverag-

The Chess Syndrome

with external forces. In business competition, the range of strategic options is

A Method for Diligence-Based Strategy

•• improving brand recognition,

It should also be noted that diligence-based strategy can be applied at any

In principle, fundamental activities could produce TSC in many ways: for

Figure 1. Comparing Ruby and Indigo.

Note: TSC = total strategic capital.

TSC from 16 (2 × 8) to 24 (3 × 8). Thus, the multiplicative system rewards bal-

Heuristic 1: Managers should allocate resources to fundamental activities

Using Heuristic 1, a company with two activities to which it has assigned

according to priorities. Heuristic 2 says that managers should allocate above-

Figure 2. Charting diligence-based strategy.

Note: TSC = total strategic capital.

Table 1. Allocating Resources to Activities.

Relative Capabilities and Priorities

Fundamental Relative Relative Capability <

Developing 4 0.14 0.20 

Improving 8 0.29 0.15

Developing culture 3 0.11 0.25 

Marketing to 8 0.29 0.10

Building 5 0.18 0.30 

Sum 28 1.00 1.00

distributes its products. Using web-based surveys of multiple respondents in

Summary and Conclusion

group identification, and political bargaining to the study of organizations. In the

uncertain implementation, success tends to depend less on “big strategy” than on

Turning to the resource allocation decision, Table A2 examines the alter-

Table A1. Computing TSC for Ruby and Indigo.

Selling 8 0.70 4 0.80

Performance TSC TSC

Additive (average)a 5.00 10 ÷ 2 = 5 5.00 10 / 2 = 5

Multiplicative 4.00 (2).50 × (8).50 = 4.00 4.90 (6).50 × (4).50 = 4.90

Note: TSC = total strategic capital.

ed by priority (“weighted geometric mean”).

Table a2. Resource Allocations for Ruby.

Performance Old New TSC TSC %

TSC Adding One Unit of Capability in MAKING.

Additivea 3 8 5.00 5.50 (3 + 8) / 2 +.50 10.0

Weighted 3 8 6.20 6.50 3(.30) + 8(.70) +.30 4.8

Multiplicativec 3 8 4.00 4.90 (3).50 × (8).50 +.90 22.5

Weighted 3 8 5.28 5.96 (3).30 × (8).70 +.68 12.9

TSC Adding One Unit of Capability in SELLING.

Additivea 2 9 5.00 5.50 (2 + 9) / 2 +.50 10.0

Weighted 2 9 6.20 6.90 2(.30) + 9(.70) +.70 11.3

Multiplicativec 2 9 4.00 4.24 (2).50 × (9).50 +.24 6.0

Weighted 2 9 5.28 5.73 (2).30 × (9).70 +.45 8.5

Note: TSC = total strategic capital.

ed by priority (“weighted geometric mean”).

Figure B1. Additive performance

A Multiplicative function is shown in the curve below (Figure B2). How

Figure B2. Multiplicative performance

Management, Really? Inductive Derivation of a Consensus Definition of the Field,” Strategic