All organizations have to compete with rivals to obtain scarce resources and achieve their performance goals. For sustained high performance, an organization needs a competitive advantage over its rivals. A competitive advantage does not happen by accident. Gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage over the long haul requires managers to craft and then implement strategies that result in a fit between the products of the enterprise and competitive conditions in the markets in which the enterprise participates. Without the correct set of strategies at the corporate, business, operating, and organizational levels, performance will suffer, the enterprise will go into decline, and the job security, career prospects, and reputations of its managers will suffer. By the same token, successful careers are enjoyed by managers who establish a reputation for being able to craft and then effectively implement strategies.

Designing and implementing strategy is not the sole preserve of top managers. Although top managers may guide the strategy-making process, the strategies crafted and implemented by operating managers also play a key role in strategic success. It is crucially important, therefore, that even the lowest-level managers in an organization have a good grasp of strategy and understand their role in the process of building and sustaining a competitive advantage.

An interesting example was referred to several times in this chapter: Microsoft's entry into the video game business with its Xbox offering. The Xbox was not the result of a grand strategic vision crafted by Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Balmer; it was the result of the actions of four engineers and their manager, who developed a prototype of the Xbox by their own initiative and on their own time, then successfully lobbied Gates and Balmer to devote resources to the commercialization of the product. To be able to pull off this kind of initiative, managers, whatever their level, must be able to articulate what the strategy should be. They cannot do that unless they understand the basics of strategy as laid out in this chapter.

Even if they are not pushing strategic initiatives, newly hired junior managers can still be surprised by how rapidly they are drawn into the strategy-making vortex of an enterprise. This is certainly true at Microsoft, where management interns have recounted, sometimes with a sense of wonder in their eyes at the possibilities, how they found themselves in a strategy session where their team was trying to articulate and defend the competitive strategy for its product offering to Bill Gates or Steve Balmer. "What a rush," one noted as he recounted the experience; "here I was, not even graduated yet, and I had to answer this blizzard of questions from Bill Gates, who was just ripping into our plan. Amazingly, at the end of the session, he told us to go ahead!"²² The ability of this intern to hold his own in the strategy conversation was due to the fact that he understood what strategy was about, what was required to gain and sustain competitive advantage, and how to articulate that. This is a skill that managers must have if they are to be successful.