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Doing Everything Means Doing Nothing Well

19 January, 2016 - 16:58

Michael Porter has noted that strategy is as much about executives deciding what a firm is not going to do as it is about deciding what the firm is going to do. 1In other words, a firm’s business-level strategy should not involve trying to serve the varied needs of different segment of customers in an industry. No firm could possibly pull this off.

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Figure 5.15
This illustration from 1887 captures the lesson of Aesop’s fable “The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass”—a lesson that executives need to follow.
 

The fable “The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass” told by the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop helps illustrate this idea. In this tale, a miller and his son were driving their ass (donkey) to market for sale. They soon encountered a group of girls who mocked them for walking instead of riding. The father then told his son to ride the animal. Not long after, father and son overheard a man claim that young people had no respect for the elderly. On hearing this opinion, the father told the boy to dismount the animal and he began to ride. They progressed a short distance farther and met a company of women and children. Several of the women suggested that it was both ridiculous and lazy for the father to ride while the young son was forced to walk alone; once again the two changed positions. Another bystander suggested that they could not believe that the man was the owner of the beast, judging from the way it was weighted down. In fact, it would make more sense for the man and his son to carry the ass. On hearing this, the father and his son tied the animal’s legs together and carried it on a pole. As they crossed a bridge near town, the townspeople began to gather and laugh at the unorthodox sight. The noise and the chaos frightened the beast, leading it to thrash around until it tumbled into the river. With tongue in cheek, we note that the moral of the story is that if you try to please everyone, you may lose your ass. 2