A.G. Lafley

CEO of Procter & Gamble and co-author (with strategy theorist Roger L. Martin) of Playing To Win, the book that documents the strategy approach he ran at P&G. In Kyle’s notes, Lafley is the operator half of the pairing: the where-to-play / how-to-win framework is Martin’s theory, but Lafley is the one who applied it as a working CEO. The book’s core mandates carry his voice — that “a company must play to win” rather than merely participate, that strategy must “start with consumers, rather than products,” and that “the most important stakeholder is and always should be… the end user.” His P&G is where the ideas Kyle files under Customer Obsession, Jobs to Be Done, and Product-Market Fit are illustrated (the Febreze “product in search of a job to be done,” the “white sheet of paper” diaper built to consumer need rather than feature-loaded for developed markets).

Context: Alan G. (“A.G.”) Lafley led Procter & Gamble as CEO from 2000–2009 and again from 2013–2015, credited with a consumer-back, innovation-driven turnaround that roughly doubled P&G’s sales and emphasized brands like Olay, Febreze, and Swiffer.

Where this appears

• Playing To Win — co-author and the P&G CEO whose strategy practice the book documents; his consumer-first, play-to-win mandates anchor the book’s takeaways.