Loizos Heracleous is Professor of Strategy and Organisation at the Warwick Business School, and Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College and Saïd Business School.

In his new book, Janus Strategy, he argues that organizations can accomplish strategies that seek to reach competing goals.

Traditional strategy wisdom suggests that there are two generic strategies — differentiation and cost leadership. It is assumed to be impossible to combine both for a prolonged period of time, and those who try succeed only temporarily (in new markets that aren’t competitive yet) or fail at both. However, some organizations prove that it is possible to be a sustained cost leader whilst being differentiated or to explore while exploiting. Janus Strategy uses case studies to explore the six factors that make this possible.

In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Heracleous explains the mindset and moves leaders need to make their organization a Janus organization.