Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters – Richard Rumelt
I was listening to the Animalz podcast recently (this episode specifically). It's a really interesting podcast about content marketing.
The episode on strategy is based around the book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters by Richard Rumelt.
To be honest, it piqued my interest but the explanation of what the book is about left me wanting to dive deeper. So I read it last week and couldn't put it down.
(Aside: At what point in life do we change from being kids to being enthralled by books about strategy?)
The basic principle is best described here:
Good strategy almost always looks this simple and obvious and does not take a thick deck of PowerPoint slides to explain. It does not pop out of some “strategic management” tool, matrix, chart, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, 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.
What I really like about this is the clarity that Rumelt talks about strategy with. At first, with every chapter, I found myself totally confused only to feel completely clear about it a few paragraphs later.
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A couple of excerpts that I highlighted
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This feels visceral having run a company now for a few years.
Bad strategy is not simply the absence of good strategy. It grows out of specific misconceptions and leadership dysfunctions. Once you develop the ability to detect bad strategy, you will dramatically improve your effectiveness at judging, influencing, and creating strategy.
I'm using this as a checklist for myself in future:
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. 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.
May my outsized competitors eternally suffer from this problem 😂:
Serious strategy work in an already successful organization may not take place until the wolf is at the door—or even until the wolf’s claws actually scratch on the floor—because good strategy is very hard work.
There's heaps more that I highlighted but I'll leave you to read and add your own because the book was brilliant (and also way more positive than these highlights suggest)
