Profiling the ideal player

After using The attractiveness/advantage matrix (GE/McKinsey) and The growth/share matrix (BCG) to choose where to compete, the next question is what capabilities success in those markets may require. Profiling the ideal player turns several plausible futures into a practical view of the capabilities a strong competitor would need.

When to use it

• Use it after selecting priority product–market segments and before assessing the organisation’s capability gaps.
• Revisit it when technology, regulation, customer expectations or competitive structure could materially change the basis of success.
• Use a workshop when diverse perspectives will improve the scenarios; the brainstorming element is helpful but not essential.

Origins

Profiling the ideal player is a practical synthesis of established scenario-planning, key-success-factor and capability-analysis methods rather than a model with one recognised inventor. It links alternative views of the future to the characteristics of a high-performing competitor, then carries the capabilities that remain important across those futures into strategic planning.

What it is

Somerset Maugham warned that perfection can be dull, but imagining a near-ideal competitor remains instructive. The purpose is not to claim that your organisation can or should become perfect. It is to ask what a highly capable player in your industry might look like three to five years from now, under more than one credible market scenario.

The resulting profile is a reference point. It helps management distinguish robust capabilities worth building now from specialised capabilities that depend on one uncertain future.

How to use it

The process has three stages:

1. Envisioning future scenarios
2. Assessing key success factors in each scenario
3. Identifying common capabilities.

The method begins by constructing plausible pictures of the future marketplace. For each scenario, describe the ideal player’s key success factors and the organisational capabilities needed to deliver them. Compare the scenarios to find capabilities that recur in all or most of them. Those recurring requirements become candidate target capabilities for Identifying the capability gap.