What are Must-Win Battles?

Must-Win Battles comes from the book "Must-Win Battles" written by Peter Killing, Thomas Malnight and Tracey Keys (published in 2005). As the title says, it is about "The battles that must be won" in order for you as a leader to create the focus necessary to achieve the goals in a busy and chaotic everyday life.

In everyday life, you often find that Must-Win Battles is shortened to MWB and thus covers the "battles" your company must win to achieve the goal. During each "match" you distribute various activities/actions.

The advantage of working with Must-Win Battles is that you get your activities divided into these battles and you know that once each of the underlying activity is resolved you are one step closer to winning the battle. In other words, it has a much better overview than if you alone have the long activity plans.

We humans want it all in half the time, but that's not the reality. My experience shows that it is an advantage to have 3-5 Must-Win Battles – and rather 3 than 5.

Our experience also shows that Must-Win Battles revolves around the same topics no matter what company you run. The most common topics are

  • Market
  • Product
  • Processes
  • Organization
  • Management
  • Sale
  • Technology

When formulating your MWB, you must ensure that you do not formulate activities, but the overall "battle" to be won. In MakeMyStrategy™ we apply this 5 point definition of what characterizes a Must-Win Battle:

"The battle must make a real difference, be market focused, create tension, be specific and concrete, and be affordable"

Source: "Strategy in winning companies"

You can visualize this overview in many ways depending on your business. Similarly, this overview allows both to lead and communicate even more clearly.

MWB must not only be prepared so that you can then tick the check mark by now they are completed. They must be combined with your other strategy material. An easy and simple approach is to use MakeMyStrategy™ as structures and summarizes all your work.

Greater growth potential than expected

Tonny Nielsen

Ceo

Food Diagnostics A/S

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