THE AFTER-POSITION

A strategy can achieve everything it set out to do and still leave the company weaker.

Management acts. Revenue rises, market share grows, a competitor withdraws, the acquisition closes. Management declares success.

But the strategy has not finished working through the system. Competitors respond. Customers learn what the product is really worth. Suppliers discover their leverage. Lenders reassess. Regulators notice. The company's own success changes its economics. Only after all of that has happened does the question that matters become visible. It worked. Where did it leave us?

The After-Position is a rigorous, evidence-led book about that question. It proposes a discipline for following any strategic decision through the full response system, evaluating the position that remains, and asking what choices survive from there. Along the way it examines:

• Why the first result is rarely the final result, and why the accounts record results but not positions
• Who can change the economics of a decision without asking permission, and why competitors are only one of them
• The competitor who doesn't need to win, and why loss-making rivals are usually pursuing something you haven't noticed
• What a price cut teaches everyone who hears it, and why the lesson outlasts the cut
• When to respond fast, when to wait, and when the right answer is not to respond at all
• Why success creates the next problem: concentration, complexity, rigidity, scrutiny, and customers trained to expect the discount

The cases come from four continents and a dozen industries: Boeing's 737 MAX, Kenya Airways, Wells Fargo, Reliance Jio, Capitec, Bayer and Monsanto, WeWork, Juul, Carillion, Tesco and the German discounters, Samsung's memory bets, and many more. Each is followed through the same sequence: decision, responses, effects, position, next move.

This is not a book about how to win. It does not tell you to move fast, dominate the market or protect your moat. It makes you suspicious of declaring victory too early, and gives you better questions to ask before you do.

For senior managers, board members, strategists, investors and anyone who has watched a strategy succeed and the company end up somewhere it did not intend to be.