Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

by Richard P. Rumelt

When a leader characterizes the challenge as underperformance, it sets the stage for bad strategy. Underperformance is a result. The true challenges are the reasons for the underperformance. Unless leadership offers a theory of why things haven’t worked in the past, or why the challenge is difficult, it is hard to generate good strategy. For example, one of Brewer’s seven key strategies was to “build school and District leadership teams that share common beliefs, values, and high expectations for all adults and students and that support a cycle of continuous improvement to ensure high-quality instruction in their schools.” This would be accomplished by building the “capacity of administrative and other school leaders.… Transformational leaders need a strongly focused program to define, sharpen and apply critical skill sets in their everyday work.”