Summary

Many organisations mistake breadth for progress. The signal blurs into ambiguity. Real positioning starts when you commit to winnable terrain—one buyer, one urgent problem—and make the hard choice. From there, momentum returns, pricing power improves, teams align, and decisions follow clear criteria.

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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Real Risk

Strategic positioning seems harmless when it’s kept broad: it preserves options and delays hard choices. Yet that breadth creates ambiguity precisely where precision is needed. Commercially, it spreads resources across segments that don’t value the same things. Organisationally, it fragments priorities. Externally, it blunts credibility because the promise keeps shifting. The real risk isn’t a bad tagline; it’s a pattern of diluted decisions that compounds over time.

In our experience with leadership teams navigating growth or change, this drift shows up as plausible plans that don’t cohere in the moment of choice—who to serve first, what to build next, what to price for. When those choices blur, costs rise and momentum slows.

Pick Winnable Terrain

The counter is focus, but not as a slogan—focus as a choice of terrain. Choose the field that gives you natural leverage: one buyer you understand deeply, one pressing problem you resolve decisively, one advantage you can defend. That constraint creates energy. It concentrates proof, shortens feedback cycles, and increases the odds that your story and your delivery match.

To make it operational:

• Name the buyer and context: who, where, and when they’re most receptive.
• Name the urgent problem: why now, what’s at risk if ignored.
• Name the sustained edge: capability, data, access, or model others can’t easily copy.

Evidence And Payoff

When focus is treated as an operating choice—not a comms exercise—the commercial effects are tangible: demand pools where you can win, cycles compress, and pricing holds. BCG reports that companies which increased concentration sustained or improved performance, with stronger firms maintaining their lead at roughly 3.3% and previous underperformers lifting to about 2.2% in post-focus shareholder returns.

Leaders should watch for early signs that focus is working:

• Pipeline quality: a higher share of ideal-fit opportunities.
• Price realisation: fewer exceptions, steadier margins.
• Cycle time: velocity through the steps you control.

Leadership Implications

Focus is not a retreat; it’s a sequencing strategy. You earn the right to broaden by dominating a defined ground first. That means choosing what not to do, and being explicit about it. It also means structuring incentives so teams win together on one bet rather than hedging across many.

Three practical implications:

• Anchor planning on situations, not sectors; resource to the most winnable scenarios.
• Tie roadmaps to a single value narrative; let criteria—not preferences—govern trade-offs.
• Use proof over claims; accumulate wins that are easy to repeat and hard to imitate.

When positioning becomes a choice of terrain, ambiguity gives way to coherence—and coherence compounds into performance that endures.

Sources:

• For Long‑Term Market Performance, Focus Beats Diversification — BCG

Further Resources

1. Why B2B Leaders Misunderstand Branding—and How to Align
2. The Evolving Role of Brand Positioning Today
3. Brand Touchpoints: Insights for Mid-Market Leaders

No two brand journeys are the same — connect with us if you’d like to test where your next step might lead. Let’s talk.

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