Positioning · September 26, 2026 · 9 min read
Why your new positioning didn't change anything (and how to make it stick)
A new positioning usually changes nothing because it gets approved as a document, and a document costs nobody anything. Everyone agrees implementation matters, and April Dunford is right that the whole company has to line up behind it. What's missing is the first uncomfortable, dated, owned change. Porter made the underlying point in 1996. A position with no trade-offs is a straddle. So ship every positioning with a stop list, borrowed from Jim Collins's stop-doing idea and aimed at three places. What the homepage and deck quit saying, which deals sales quits chasing, and which promises come off the roadmap slide. Every line gets one owner and a date inside thirty days. If nothing on the list makes someone in the room uncomfortable, the positioning isn't finished.