If there was a rule book of strategic mistakes, straddling would be among the big rules. Straddling in strategy is the failure to commit to one path. Straddling is the act of fence-sitting, of choosing to have one’s cake and eating eat. Straddling is in trying to be everything for everyone.
All mistakes in strategy can be forgiven, but there’s no room for a straddler in the long-term. To straddle means to fail to own a position on the landscape. While everyone is finding a place to camp, you’re moving around setting up your tent and then moving it to a new place. Straddling is comparable to that driver that just can’t commit to a lane. In the end, he’s hooted out of every lane.
Straddling could even be seen in businesses that fail to pick their hill, between cost leadership and differentiation. It’s not to say that the two can’t be blended, but one must take center stage. You are either reducing your supplier opportunity cost (able to drive out costs across your value chain) or you are increasing willingness to pay through differentiation. Yet, businesses keep committing these errors and the market keeps punishing them for the same mistake.
It’s not to say that those who commit to a landscape will always win, but it’s to confirm that the straddlers will always lose in the long-term. There’s not a single business that is a straddler that can make it to a decade. No straddler makes it to the finishing line. And that finishing line could be one of growth in earnings per share, it could be net profit, it could even be growth in market share.
Why is straddling a strategic error? Because strategy is about choices. And choices imply that there’s a tradeoff. If there’s no trade-off, then you’ve not made a choice. Great businesses have also made great trade-offs. They have not only decided who they are and who they will be, but also decided who they are not and who they won’t be.