Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

by Richard P. Rumelt

Facing a complex situation like this makes most people uncomfortable. The more seriously you take it, the more you will see it as a real and difficult challenge that requires a coherent response. And that realization will, in turn, make you even more uncomfortable. It is so ill-structured. There are too many variables, so many factors, too many unknowns, no clear list of potential actions and no way to make clear links between actions and outcomes. You are not even sure what the problem is. Like a swimmer dropped into very choppy waters, it is hard to get your bearings. Under pressure to develop a way out of the difficulty, that first idea is a welcome relief. Thank goodness, here is something to hang on to! It feels much better to get oriented. The problem is that there might be better ideas out there, just beyond the edge of our vision. But we accept early closure because letting go of a judgment is painful and disconcerting. To search for a new insight, one would have to put aside the comfort of being oriented and once again cast around in choppy waters for a new source of stability. There is the fear of coming up empty-handed. Plus, it is unnatural, even painful, to question our own ideas. Thus, when we do come up with an idea, we tend to spend most of our effort justifying it rather than questioning it. That seems to be human nature, even in experienced executives. To put it simply, our minds dodge the painful work of questioning and letting go of our first early judg...