Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

by Richard P. Rumelt

I call this combination of three elements the kernel to emphasize that it is the bare-bones center of a strategy—the hard nut at the core of the concept. It leaves out visions, hierarchies of goals and objectives, references to time span or scope, and ideas about adaptation and change. All of these are supporting players. They represent ways of thinking about strategy, stimulating the creation of strategies, energizing groups of people, denoting specific sources of advantage, communicating, summarizing, and analyzing strategies, and so on. The core content of a strategy is a diagnosis of the situation at hand, the creation or identification of a guiding policy for dealing with the critical difficulties, and a set of coherent actions. I will explore the three elements of the kernel one by one.