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 leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.
A good strategy recognizes the nature of the challenge and offers a way of surmounting it.
When the “strategy” process is basically a game of setting performance goals—so much market share and so much profit, so many students graduating high school, so many visitors to the museum—then there remains a yawning gap between these ambitions and action.
The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.
Bad strategy is more than just the absence of good strategy.
Bad strategy may actively avoid analyzing obstacles because a leader believes that negative thoughts get in the way.
Leaders may create bad strategy by mistakenly treating strategy work as an exercise in goal setting rather than problem solving.
The most basic idea of strategy is the application of strength against weakness.
Having a coherent strategy—one that coordinates policies and actions.
The creation of new strengths through subtle shifts in viewpoint.
The standard story was that some change in demand or technology had appeared—a “window of opportunity” had opened—and the current leader had been the first one to leap through that window and take advantage of it.
But when I asked about their own companies’ strategies, there was a very different kind of response.
He just smiled and said, “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”
Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no
to a wide variety of actions and interests.
How someone can see what others have not, or what they have ignored, and thereby discover a pivotal objective and create an advantage, lies at the very edge of our understanding, something glimpsed only out of the corner of our minds.
identify your strengths and weaknesses, assess the opportunities and risks (your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses), and build on your strengths.
Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.
Failure to face the challenge.
Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge.When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.
Mistaking goals for strategy.
Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
Bad strategic objectives.A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.
The basic problem is confusion between strategy and strategic goals.
Bad strategy, I explained, is not the same thing as no strategy or strategy that fails rather than succeeds.
As a simple example of fluff in strategy work, here is a quote from a major retail bank’s internal strategy memoranda: “Our fundamental strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation.”
Pull off the fluffy covering and you have the superficial statement “Our bank’s fundamental strategy is being a bank.”
A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable.
A hallmark of mediocrity and bad strategy is unnecessary complexity—a flurry of fluff masking an absence of substance.
A 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.
A long list of “things to do,” often mislabeled as “strategies” or “objectives,” is not a strategy. It is just a list of things to do.
Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.
When leaders are unwilling or unable to make choices among competing values and parties, bad strategy is the consequence.
A second pathway to bad strategy is the siren song of template-style strategy—filling in the blanks with vision, mission, values, and strategies.
A third pathway to bad strategy is New Thought—the belief that all you need to succeed is a positive mental attitude.
And choice means setting aside some goals in favor of others.
There is difficult psychological, political, and organizational work in saying “no” to whole worlds of hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Peter Drucker, one of the foremost thinkers about management, said, “Effective leadership doesn’t depend on charisma.
Currently popular unique visions are to be “the best” or The “the leading” or “the best known.”
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 leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.
A good strategy recognizes the nature of the challenge and offers a way of surmounting it.
When the “strategy” process is basically a game of setting performance goals—so much market share and so much profit, so many students graduating high school, so many visitors to the museum—then there remains a yawning gap between these ambitions and action.
The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.
Bad strategy is more than just the absence of good strategy. Bad strategy may actively avoid analyzing obstacles because a leader believes that negative thoughts get in the way. Leaders may create bad strategy by mistakenly treating strategy work as an exercise in goal setting rather than problem solving.
The most basic idea of strategy is the application of strength against weakness.
The standard story was that some change in demand or technology had appeared—a “window of opportunity” had opened—and the current leader had been the first one to leap through that window and take advantage of it.
But when I asked about their own companies’ strategies, there was a very different kind of response.
He just smiled and said, “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”
Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests.
How someone can see what others have not, or what they have ignored, and thereby discover a pivotal objective and create an advantage, lies at the very edge of our understanding, something glimpsed only out of the corner of our minds.
identify your strengths and weaknesses, assess the opportunities and risks (your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses), and build on your strengths.
Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.
Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge.When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.
Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
Bad strategic objectives.A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.
The basic problem is confusion between strategy and strategic goals.
Bad strategy, I explained, is not the same thing as no strategy or strategy that fails rather than succeeds.
As a simple example of fluff in strategy work, here is a quote from a major retail bank’s internal strategy memoranda: “Our fundamental strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation.” Pull off the fluffy covering and you have the superficial statement “Our bank’s fundamental strategy is being a bank.”
A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable.
A hallmark of mediocrity and bad strategy is unnecessary complexity—a flurry of fluff masking an absence of substance.
A 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.
A long list of “things to do,” often mislabeled as “strategies” or “objectives,” is not a strategy. It is just a list of things to do.
Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.
When leaders are unwilling or unable to make choices among competing values and parties, bad strategy is the consequence.
A second pathway to bad strategy is the siren song of template-style strategy—filling in the blanks with vision, mission, values, and strategies.
A third pathway to bad strategy is New Thought—the belief that all you need to succeed is a positive mental attitude.
And choice means setting aside some goals in favor of others.
There is difficult psychological, political, and organizational work in saying “no” to whole worlds of hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Peter Drucker, one of the foremost thinkers about management, said, “Effective leadership doesn’t depend on charisma.
Currently popular unique visions are to be “the best” or The “the leading” or “the best known.”