Alan G. Lafley
American businessman and former chairperson of Procter & GambleWikipedia
21
MENTIONS
8
EPISODES
8
PODCASTS
Search complete. 21 mentions across 8 episodes found for "Alan G. Lafley".
Sep 20, 2026
Raman SehgalHOST
Well, you know, we were talking right before we hit record.
Raman SehgalHOST
And a theme you talk about in this book is old friends, right? And those relationships you carry with you throughout your life.
Raman SehgalHOST
And again, I'm sure the universe would have brought us together.
Raman SehgalHOST
I would have heard of this book at some point.
26 MINS LATER
Greg AllgoodGUEST
Yeah, I...
Greg AllgoodGUEST
I so value the time with my daughters and my family.
Greg AllgoodGUEST
And so I've made a better choice in doing that with my friends.
Greg AllgoodGUEST
I talk a lot in the book about my friends, Wes Williams and Don Glenn, and how important they've been to me as this keeping me grounded, you know, when things are bad or when they're good, having that time with them and being able to challenge each other.
Joe KernenHOST
couple times, it seems like.
Joe KernenHOST
A.G. Lafley at P&G had trouble.
Joe KernenHOST
And then he came back.
Joe KernenHOST
You can't come back.
Rich HorwathSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And those are great examples.
Rich HorwathSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Uh, Procter & Gamble with A.G. Lafley is another example where they said, "We're gonna have strategic thinkers at all levels." And by doing that, what you do is you create a true learning organization because strategic thinking is built on insight, and I define an insight as a learning that leads to new value.
Rich HorwathSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So if you've got that middle group and they don't feel that the leaders see value in them in producing insights, then they're gonna shut down, and they're not going to share some of the ideas that they're getting from the customer because they tend to be closer to the customer.
Rich HorwathSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So as a senior leader, you've got to reach out to those folks intentionally on a regular cadence and have conversations about some of the key business issues, and that's the way you start to create that virtuous cycle of insight.
Gerardo A. DadaGUEST
Well, it, it's two reasons.
Gerardo A. DadaGUEST
The one thing I actually added to that definition is that strategy is a choice, right? If you remember the book, I, I started with the definition from Lafley and Martin and said like, but the key here is it, it's a choice.
Gerardo A. DadaGUEST
And that is very, very important because when you decide where to play, that means what markets you're gonna serve, what customers you're gonna serve, but also which customers you're not going to serve, right? So a great example is I-- when I was at Rackspace, I don't know the, uh, hopefully the people listening are familiar, Rackspace w- was known for fanatical support, right? So it was a very high quality, hands-on, uh, n- not cheap, not the cheapest product, right? So one day, I was actually-- I sent an email to a bunch of customers, and I started responding to those emails myself because I wanted to get that customer interaction.
Gerardo A. DadaGUEST
I wanted to bring that custom- be- become knowledgeable of customers.
Ed OffterdingerGUEST
I can't help myself giving my background into the strategy.
Ed OffterdingerGUEST
And so what I would say is that, you know, for me, there are multiple ways to think about strategy, but I'm a big fan of the choice cascade, which is came, you know, when a plane to win by Lafley and Roger Martin.
Ed OffterdingerGUEST
And this is just this idea that you have your goals and aspirations.
Ed OffterdingerGUEST
Where are you going to play? So that's where you figure out, you know, service lines, geographies, how are you going to win? What's your value proposition? And then the fourth one, which gets to the point you're asking is like, and what are the assets and capabilities you need to execute this first thing? So we go through that over a period of time.
Lora CecereGUEST
They've spent a lot of money to basically buy assets, and we've churned a lot of talent and assets, but they haven't grown.
Lora CecereGUEST
And a lot of that has to do with the fact that marketing driven or a marketing plan doesn't necessarily translate to market driven, which is really, you know, back to A.G. Lafley's guarantee at the four moments of truth of was the customer delighted when they bought that? Was it available? And how did we do on that customer reliability? The other thing is, if you look at the pharmaceutical industry, we have a lot of old companies with traditional beliefs in supply chain, and traditional supply chain processes aren't best practices.
Lora CecereGUEST
And these companies are sitting with 22 percent margin and really not innovating.
Lora CecereGUEST
A lot of people that are sitting on supply chain legacy at companies like Pfizer and Bristol-Myers and really need to innovate at that intersection of product delivery and the market.
Anne CandidoHOST
And that's what we're going to deep dive in today.
Anne CandidoHOST
But I always like this quote from A.G. Lafley because I think this really puts a nice kind of just metaphorical context to what behaviors and actions really mean.
Anne CandidoHOST
So he used to always say, and he probably still says that, but is that execution is the only strategy the consumer sees.
Anne CandidoHOST
And so this is like your behaviors and actions.
Liam CurleyHOST
At the time of making this podcast, Roger has since published 13 books, so very much a public thought leader.
Liam CurleyHOST
But there's one book in particular that has had a disproportionate impact above all the other 12 on his standing as an authority, Playing to Win, which he co-authored with A.G. Lafley.
Liam CurleyHOST
It's a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller.
Liam CurleyHOST
Harvard Business Review referred to it as a contemporary business classic, and Roger has said it's one of the best-selling books on strategy ever published.
Liam CurleyHOST
Monitor subsequently created the Applied Strategic Management program, ASM, for the category general management teams at Procter & Gamble and delivered that program across their four regions between 1987 and 1989.
Liam CurleyHOST
Roger worked with Monitor's CEO, Mark Fuller, to create and deliver ASM, and then Roger took over leadership of the relationship with Procter & Gamble.
Liam CurleyHOST
During that time, he got to know two of the leading category general managers, A.G. Lafley and Wolfgang Berndt.
Liam CurleyHOST
Simultaneously with all this, something else was happening If you remember, during the '80s much of the work Monitor was doing was coming in through Michael Porter's book, Competitive Strategy.