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a talented leader identifies the one or two critical issues in the situation—the pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of effort—and then focuses and concentrates action and resources on them.
The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.
Ambition is drive and zeal to excel. Determination is commitment and grit. Innovation is the discovery and engineering of new ways to do things. Inspirational leadership motivates people to sacrifice for their own and the common good.1 And strategy, responsive to innovation and ambition, selects the path, identifying how, why, and where leadership and determination are to be applied.
the term “strategy” should mean a cohesive response to an important challenge.
a strategy is a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions that respond to a high-stakes challenge.
A good strategy includes a set of coherent actions.
A strategy that fails to define a variety of plausible and feasible immediate actions is missing a critical component.
The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and
coherent action.
The guiding policy specifies the approach to dealing with the obstacles calle...
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Coherent actions are feasible coordinated policies, resource commitments, and actions designed to ...
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A good strategy has coherence, coordinating actions, policies, and resources so as to accomplish an important end.
Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy.
Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.
This whole design—structure, policies, and actions—is coherent.
It isn’t the store; it is the network of 150 stores.
Walton didn’t break the conventional wisdom; he broke the old definition of a store.
Walton broke with an even deeper conventional wisdom of his era: the doctrine of decentralization,
that each kettle should sit on its own bottom.
the oft-forgotten cost of decentralization is lost coordination across units. Stores that do not choose the same vendors or negotiate the same terms cannot benefit from an integrated network of data and transport. Stores that do not share detailed information about what works and what does not cannot benefit from one another’s learning.
Coordinated, coherent
once Walton’s insights made the decentralized structure a disadvantage, Kmart had a severe problem.
breaking with doctrine—with one’s basic philosophy—is rare absent a near-death experience.
use your relative advantages to impose out-of-proportion costs on the opposition and complicate his problem of competing with you.
Their insight was framed in the language of business strategy: identify your strengths and weaknesses, assess the opportunities and risks (your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses), and build on your strengths.
discovery of a different way of viewing competitive advantage—a
looking for ways to impose asymmetric costs ...
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To detect a bad strategy, look for one or more of its four major hallmarks:
Fluff. Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments.
F...
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Failure to face the challenge.
Failure to face the challenge.
Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge.
Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge.
Mistaking goals for strategy.
Mistaking goals for strategy.
Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
Bad strategic obj...
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Bad strategic obj...
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A strategic objective is set by a leader as a ...
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strategic objective is set by a leader as a m...
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to address critic...
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describing a destination is no substitute for developing a comprehensive roadmap for how the country will achieve its stated goals.”
The basic problem is confusion between strategy and strategic goals.”
Bad strategy is long on goals and short on policy or action. It assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable. It uses high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings.
Fluff is superficial restatement of the obvious combined with a generous sprinkling of buzzwords.
A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable.
strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge.
If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy.
If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don’t have a strategy. Instead, you have either a stretch goal, a budget, or a list of things you wish would happen.
