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Good Strategy Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt's book 'Good Strategy Bad Strategy' differentiates between effective and ineffective strategies, emphasizing the importance of clear diagnoses, guiding policies, and coherent actions. A good strategy identifies key challenges and articulates a plan to overcome them, while a bad strategy confuses ambitions and goals with actual strategy, leading to incoherence and ineffective outcomes. Rumelt also highlights the pitfalls of bad strategies, including vague objectives and a lack of real choice in decision-making.
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Good Strategy Bad Strategy
- 1. Some Impressionistic takesfrom the book of Richard Rumelt “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” The Difference –Why it matters? by Ramki [email protected]
- 2. About the Author RichardP. Rumelt (born 1942) is the Harry and Elsa Kunin Professor of Business & Society at UCLA Anderson, a graduate school of business and management. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School (HBS). Prior to UCLA, he worked as a systems design engineer, and taught at the HBS and Iran Center for Management Studies.
- 3. Prelude Most leaderswill agree that Strategy is crucial for an organization’s success. Yet most organizations don’t have a good strategy; they confuse strategy with ambition, innovation, inspirational leadership, goal-setting, high-level decisions, determination or successful outcomes. A Strategy should be a cohesive blend of ideas, analyses, policies and actions in response to an important, high-stakes challenge. It’s about uncovering the critical factors in a situation, then directing your energy and resources to addressing those factors through focused, coordinated action. In this book, Rumelt explains the difference between good strategy and bad strategy, with specific tips and guidelines for crafting good strategies.
- 4. “The Objective ofthis book is to wake you up to the dramatic differences between good strategy and bad strategy and to give you a leg up toward crafting good strategies.”
- 5. Strategy is designinga way to deal with a challenge. A good strategy, therefore, must identify the challenge to be overcome, and design a way to overcome it. To do that, the kernel of a good strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action. The Kernel of Strategy
- 6. The Kernel ofStrategy A diagnosis defines the challenge. What's holding you back from reaching your goals? A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality down to a simpler story by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical. A good diagnosis often uses a metaphor, analogy, or an existing accepted framework to make it simple and understandable, which then suggests a domain of action. A guiding policy is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. Like the guardrails on a highway, the guiding policy directs and constrains action in certain directions without defining exactly what shall be done. A set of coherent actions dictate how the guiding policy will be carried out. The actions should be coherent, meaning the use of resources, policies, and maneuvers that are undertaken should be coordinated and support each other (not fight each other, or be independent from one another).
- 9. Good Strategy Vs.Bad Strategy Good strategy is simple and obvious. Good strategy identifies the key challenge to overcome. Bad strategy fails to identify the nature of the challenge. If you don't know what the problem is, you can't evaluate alternative guiding policies or actions to take, and you can't adjust your strategy as you learn more over time. Good strategy includes actions to take to overcome the challenge. Actions are not "implementation" details; they are the punch in the strategy. Strategy is about how an organization will move forward. Bad strategy lacks actions to take. Bad strategy mistakes goals, ambition, vision, values, and effort for strategy (these things are important, but on their own are not strategy). Good strategy is designed to be coherent - all the actions an organization takes should reinforce and support each other. Leaders must do this deliberately and coordinate action across departments.
- 10. Good Strategy Vs.Bad Strategy Bad strategy is just a list of "priorities" that don't support each other, at best, or actively conflict with each other, undermine each other, and fight for resources, at worst. The rich and powerful can get away with this, but it makes for bad strategy. This was the biggest "ah-ha!" moment for me. All strategy I've seen has just been a list of unconnected objectives. Designing a strategy that's coherent and mutually reinforces itself is a huge step forward in crafting good strategies. Good strategy is about focusing and coordinating efforts to achieve an outcome, which necessarily means saying "No" to some goals, initiatives, and people. Bad strategy is the result of a leader who's unwilling or unable to say "No." The reason good strategy looks so simple is because it takes a lot of effort to maintain the coherence of its design by saying "No" to people. Good strategy leverages sources of power to overcome an obstacle. It brings relative strength to bear against relative weakness
- 11. “A good strategyhas an essential logical structure that I call the kernel.” “A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.”
- 12. Bad strategy isnot just the absence of good strategy. It comes from misconceptions that hinder sound strategy. Beware of Bad Strategy
- 13. How to identifyBad Strategy There are 4 hallmarks of bad strategies: Fluff, i.e. gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts. They use abstract buzzwords like “customer-centric” or “cutting- edge” to portray high-level thinking and hide the lack of substance. Failure to face the challenge. If you don’t define the obstacles or problems, you can’t respond to them effectively. Mistaking goals for strategy. A bad strategy is often a statement of desire (e.g. reduce processing time by 50%) instead of a plan for overcoming obstacles (e.g. fixing a vital bottleneck). A strategic objective is a means of overcoming an obstacle. For example, to achieve broad “goals” like freedom, security and justice, the United States breaks them down into actionable objectives, e.g. to defeat the Taliban and to rebuild deteriorating infrastructure. Bad strategic objectives fail to address the critical issues or are simply unfeasible.
- 14. Forms of BadStrategy Dog's Dinner Objectives: A long list of "things to do," often mislabeled as "strategies" or "objectives." These lists usually grow out of planning meetings in which stakeholders state what they would like to accomplish, then they throw these initiatives onto a long list called the "strategic plan" so that no one's feelings get hurt, and they apply the label "long-term" so that none of them need be done today. In tech-land, I see a lot of companies conflate OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) with strategy. OKRs are an exercise in goal setting and measuring progress towards those goals (which is important), but it doesn't replace strategy work. The process typically looks like this: once a year, each department head is asked to come up with their own departmental OKRs, which are supposed to be connected to company goals (increase revenue, decrease costs, etc.).
- 15. Forms of BadStrategy Dog's Dinner Objectives: Then each department breaks down their OKRs into sub-OKRs for their teams to carry out, which are then broken down into sub-sub- OKRs for sub-teams and/or specific people, so on down the chain. This process just perpetuates departmental silos and are rarely cohesive or mutually supportive of each other (if this does happen, its usually a happy accident). Department and team leaders often throw dependencies on other departments and teams, which causes extra work for teams that they often haven 't planned for and aren't connected to their own OKRs, which drags down the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire organization. Its easy for leaders to underestimate this drag since its hard to measure, and what isn't measured isn't managed.
- 16. Forms of BadStrategy Setting objectives is not the same as creating a strategy to reach those goals. You still need to do the hard strategy work of making a diagnosis of what obstacle is holding you back, creating a guiding policy for overcoming the obstacle, and breaking that down into coherent actions for the company to take (which shouldn't 't be based on what departments or people or expertise you already have, but instead you should look at what competencies you need to carry out your strategy and then apply existing teams and people to carrying them out, if they exist, and hire where you 're missing expertise, and get rid of competencies that are no longer needed in the strategy). OKRs can be applied at the top layer as company goals to reach, then applied again to the coherent actions (i.e. what's the objective of each action, and how will you know if you reached it?), and further broken down for teams and people as needed. You still need an actual strategy before you can set OKRs, but most companies conflate OKRs with strategy.
- 17. Forms of BadStrategy Blue Sky Objectives: A blue-sky objective is a simple restatement of the desired state of affairs or of the challenge. It skips over the annoying fact that no one has a clue as to how to get there. For example, "underperformance" isn't a challenge, it's a result. It's a restatement of a goal. The true challenge are the reasons for the underperformance. Unless leadership offers a theory of why things haven't worked in the past (a.k.a. a diagnosis), or why the challenge is difficult, it is hard to generate good strategy. The Unwillingness or Inability to Choose: Any strategy that has universal buy-in signals the absence of choice. Because strategy focuses resources, energy, and attention on some objectives rather than others, a change in strategy will make some people worse off and there will be powerful forces opposed to almost any change in strategy (e.g. a department head who faces losing people, funding, headcount, support, etc., as a result of a change in strategy will most likely be opposed to the change). Therefore, strategy that has universal buy-in often indicates a leader who was unwilling to make a difficult choice as to the guiding policy and actions to take to overcome the obstacles. This is true, but there are ways of mitigating this that he doesn't 't discuss, which I talk about in the "Closing Thoughts" section below.
- 18. Forms of BadStrategy Template-style “Strategic planning:" Many strategies are developed by following a template of what a "strategy" should look like. Since strategy is somewhat nebulous, leaders are quick to adopt a template they can fill in since they have no other frame of reference for what goes into a strategy. These templates usually take this form: The Vision: Your unique vision of what the org will be like in the future. Often starts with "the best" or "the leading." The Mission: High-sounding politically correct statement of the purpose of the org. The Values: The company's values. Make sure they are non- controversial. The Strategies: Fill in some aspirations/goals but call them strategies. This template-style strategy skips over the hard work of identifying the key challenge to overcome, and setting out a guiding policy and actions to overcome the obstacle. It mistakes pious statements of the obvious as if they were decisive insights. The vision, mission, and goals are usually statements that no one would argue against, but that no one is inspired by, either.
- 19. Key differences betweenGood & Bad Strategy
- 20. Key Reasons whyBad Strategy is prevalent It’s hard to focus on one area because you must give up something else. Leaders who’re unwilling/unable to choose between different values or stakeholder priorities end up with a vague compromise with no strategic focus. Many leaders use a template-style approach which involves filling in their vision, mission, values and “strategies” into a fixed template. The result is actually an expression of their goals and aspirations, which can still be useful for articulating an inspiring vision, but lacks the analysis and coherent actions of a real strategy. New thought teaches the use of positive thinking to attract your desired outcomes. The idea is to only envision your success and avoid all thoughts of failure. Such beliefs discourage people from facing and tackling their problems, which is the crux of strategy.
- 21. “In business, mostdeep strategic changes are brought about by a change in diagnosis—a change in the definition of the company’s situation.” “Good strategy is not just ‘what’ you are trying to do. It is also ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are doing it.” “Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.”
- 22. At the root,strategy is about applying your biggest strengths to your biggest opportunity . Good Strategies Amplify the Impact of Your Strength
- 23. Coherent Strategy Havinga coherent strategy already gives you 2 natural sources of strength: A good strategy gives you a natural advantage since most organizations don’t have one and won’t expect you to have one. In any situation, you can uncover hidden insights just by looking at things from a fresh perspective—to identify new sources of strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. For example, conventional wisdom said that a full-line discount store required a population base of at least 100,000. Walmart defined its “store” differently—instead of having huge stores in big cities, it created an integrated network of stores in less-populated suburbs and fused them using data and systems. Walmart’s success came from Adopting a different perspective on discount retailing and Counting on big chains (like Kmart) not responding until it was too late.
- 24. Harnessing Source ofPower There are many ways to leverage power to overcome obstacles. Harness sources of power and use them where they’ll have the biggest impact. In this section, we’ll share several important sources of power.
- 25. Strategic Leverage Strategicleverage is about (i) exploiting an imbalance to create a disproportionate payoff, and/or (ii) directing limited resources toward 1 pivotal objective. It comes from a mix of anticipation, pivot points and concentrated effort. You can gain an advantage from insightful predictions or anticipation of others’ behavior (e.g. customers’ or rivals’ responses to current events/trends). For example, during the SUV boom in the USA, Toyota already invested >$1bil in hybrid gasoline-electric technologies. This was in anticipation that (a) fuel-supply pressures would increase the demand for hybrid vehicles, and (b) other automakers would respond by licensing Toyota’s technology instead of developing their own. Look for pivot points that can magnify the effects of focused effort. 7- Eleven focused its organizational energy on the decisive aspects of each market. In Japan, they catered to local tastes and the love for novelty by using store data to rapidly develop new product offerings. In China, they stood out from competitors with spotless interiors, tasty lunches and white-gloved personnel who smiled and bowed to customers.
- 26. Apply concentratedeffort on the few most crucial objectives. This creates disproportionate gains because You’re maximizing the returns from limited resources (e.g. cash or leaders’ time/cognition), and You’re more likely to achieve threshold effects (i.e. payoffs that can only be attained with a minimum level of effort). That’s why successful businesses prefer to dominate a small market segment (vs having a tiny slice of many big markets), and politicians tend to tailor their plans to specific groups (instead of catering to the whole population). Instead of having an unreachable goal that no one knows how to achieve, choose a proximate objective that’s close enough to be feasible, i.e. a target that you can reasonably achieve or even exceed. This makes the goal concrete enough so people can Work out how to get there, and Focus their energy and resources accordingly. Kennedy’s ambitious goal to put a man on the moon by 1969 was actually a proximate objective: he knew the required technology was within reach and it was just a matter of directing and coordinating resources accordingly Strategic Leverage
- 27. When anorganization faces crippling complexity and uncertainty, it’s the leaders’ responsibility to resolve ambiguity, simplify the problem so it becomes solvable, and risk being blamed if they’re wrong. When NASA engineers tried to design a machine that could land on the moon, they got stuck since no one knew what the moon surface was like. Phyllis Buwalda fixed the problem by coming up with a model of the moon’s surface—this was only a best-guess, but it provided a proximate objective to help the engineers move ahead. It’s a misconception that the more uncertain the situation, the further you must plan. The reverse is true: the more dynamic a situation, the worse your forecasts will be and the more you must take a position and create options by setting a proximate strategic objective. It’s like playing chess—you can’t checkmate your opponent from the onset, but you can keep making moves to improve your position relative to your opponent’s. Ask yourself: What’s the 1 objective that’s feasible and can make the biggest difference if achieved? Strategic Leverage
- 28. In anyorganization, you’ll probably have a hierarchy of objectives, where high-level proximate objectives cascade into lower-level proximate objectives. Your long-term goals will also guide your short- term goals. You can only focus on a new strategic objective if your basics are in place. You must master how to take off and land a plane before you attempt complex maneuvers. Likewise, a startup’s local operations must be running like clockwork before it’s ready to expand into complex international operations. A Chain-link system is one where the overall performance is limited by its weakest link. You can’t enhance the system until the weak link(s) are fixed. In a chain-link system with poor quality, you can get stuck since you’ll only waste resources and reduce overall profitability if you increase the quality in 1 part of the chain without addressing others. For example, there’s no point adding sophisticated machines without skilled workers, or to educate people in a domain with no jobs. Strategic Leverage & Chain Link System
- 29. Harnessing Source ofPower The only way to get unstuck is to tackle the bottlenecks one at a time until the entire system is upgraded. For example, you may have to improve your product quality first, then upgrade your sales capabilities, then reduce costs, before you see higher profits. This requires Insight into the key bottlenecks and Leaders’ willingness to absorb short-term losses for future gains. Chain-link systems can work for or against you. If you’re stuck in a low- quality system, it can be hard to improve the entire chain. But in a well- designed, well-managed chain-link system, you can achieve a level of excellence that’s hard for rivals to replicate. For example, IKEA’s success formula is no secret, yet no one has successfully duplicated its strategy so far. That’s because IKEA has Built excellence into all its core activities, Chain-linked these activities tightly and Mastered the diverse expertise required for these activities. This makes it hard for competitors to copy their strategy without replicating the entire system.
- 30. Design A goodstrategy uses design to fit different pieces together into a coherent whole. Most systems have many moving parts with complex relationships. For instance, to create a luxury car, you must address all aspects of the driving experience, buying experience, pricing, advertising etc. All parts of the system must be carefully designed to meet the overall system’s needs and to avoid wasteful duplication. There’s a trade-off to be balanced. A tightly-integrated strategy allows you to achieve a lot with limited resources, but its narrower focus also makes you more vulnerable and inflexible. If you’re facing resource constraints and massive challenges (e.g. a startup in a competitive market), a tightly-designed strategy can help you to succeed. But if you’re a huge company with ample resources, you can afford to have slightly less specialization and integration.
- 31. Design & Focus Strategic resources are assets which offer fairly long- lasting advantages and can’t be easily duplicated by others. With such resources, it’s possible to earn more profits without a well-designed strategy. However, don’t rely on those resources and get lulled into complacency. Xerox’s patents on plain paper copying gave it a strong advantage in the 1950s. It could’ve used this lead time to develop other strategic resources (e.g. superior paper-handling abilities) to strengthen its position. Unfortunately, Xerox didn’t do so and eventually lost its edge to other companies like Canon and IBM. Focus is about serving a particular market segment much better than other players can. It involves Coordinating policies in a synergistic way to deliver extra power, then Directing that power to the right market segment. In short, focus on your core segment instead of spreading your resources too thinly.
- 32. Growth Growth initself is not a strategy. Healthy growth—reflected in a market share gain and superior profits—comes from offering superior value & developing the demand for your capabilities. It’s the reward for successful innovation and efficiency. Leaders often make the mistake of pursuing mergers and acquisitions for economies of scale and better cash flows. Such engineered growth won’t add value unless (i) you’re buying the company for less than it’s worth, or (ii) you’re in a special position to add more value to the business than others. Otherwise, it’s enough to contract the service instead of buying the company. Metal container-maker Crown Cork & Seal made its success by focusing on short runs for small businesses with rush orders. However, its new CEO pursued an aggressive growth program with 20 acquisitions from 1989-1997. Crown became the world’s biggest container manufacturer but lost focus and its stock price fell from $55 to $5 between 1998 and 2001.
- 33. Growth Asymmetries betweenrivals can be turned into an advantage. Know the relative strengths/weaknesses between you and your rivals, and exploit the advantage. Strengths and weaknesses are relative because a strength in 1 context may be a weakness in another. You must press where you have advantages and avoid situations where you don’t. Exploit your rivals’ weaknesses without exposing your own. In business, competitive advantage is the ability to Produce at a lower cost than rivals, Deliver more perceived value than rivals, or A combination of both. No advantage is universal, i.e. it’ll be limited to certain products, buyer groups, locations etc. To sustain an advantage, you need “isolating mechanisms” that prevent rivals from duplicating it. These include patents, reputations, commercial/social relationships, network effects, knowledge and skills gained from experience, etc.
- 34. Growth Competitive advantagesdon’t always translate into wealth or profits. Once you have an advantage, use ≥1 of these 4 value-creating changes to harness the advantage fully: Deepen an advantage by widening the gap between buyer value and cost, i.e. increase buyer value, reduce costs, or both. Re-examine every aspect of the product/process and challenge prevailing norms and assumptions. In the 1900s, Frank Gilbreth doubled the productivity of bricklaying just by observing and improving the thousand-year-old process. Extend the existing advantage into new areas, such as how Walt Disney successfully extended its family-friendly brand and reputation into films/movies Create higher demand for the advantaged products/ services. However, make sure you have the resources to serve/capture the new demand generated. Create/strengthen isolating mechanisms to prevent rivals from duplicating you. You can work on stronger patents, copyrights and brand-name protections, or keep refining your methods/products so they’re harder to imitate.
- 35. Dynamics Dynamics arethe waves of change that roll over an industry, including a mix of shifts in technology, competition, politics, and buyer preferences. Such changes are beyond an organization’s control, but you can see them coming and exploit the new sources of advantage that they leave behind. As a strategist, you must do your own analysis instead of relying on analysts or pundits. Combine your proprietary knowledge with industry trends and consider second order effects. For example, the deregulation and digitization of the telco industry were long-anticipated, but no one expected (a) the rise of software as a new source of advantage and (b) the deconstruction of the computer industry. In the past, systems were integrated by CPUs. With the birth of cheap microprocessors, individual component parts (e.g. keyboards, modems) became “smarter”, removing the need for complex systems integration by companies like IBM and DEC. Customers could also use software with general-purpose microprocessors to create any desired behavior (which was also much faster and cheaper than creating new hardware). Small software teams were now thriving while big incumbents struggled.
- 36. Harnessing Source ofPower This was how Cisco Systems—started by 2 university staff members—became a major telco equipment player. In the early 1980s, Stanford University created a solution to connect its separate networks. Later, 2 other Stanford staff refined the solution, started Cisco Systems and bought the legal rights to the software. Thereafter, Cisco rode 3 simultaneous waves between 1988- 1993: The microprocessor and rise of software, The rise of corporate networking, and The rise of Internet Protocol (IP) networking. Then in 1993, Internet usage reached the general public, resulting in an explosion of demand for Cisco routers. The combination of skill and luck allowed them to ride the powerful waves of change to achieve phenomenal success
- 37. 5-Guide Posts Youcan’t forecast the future, but you can detect waves with 5 guideposts. Rising fixed costs which may force industry consolidation. Changes in government policy (especially deregulation) which changes the competitive landscape. Predictable biases in forecasting: people tend to wrongly assume that Growth trend will continue indefinitely, Big firms will triumph over small/mid- sized ones, and Competitors will follow existing leaders’ strategies. Incumbents’ response to change (as elaborated in the sections on inertia and entropy). The attractor state which describes how an industry “should” end up if it meets buyer needs as efficiently as possible. During the telco industry turmoil of 1995–2000, Cisco Systems already described the industry’s attractor state with its strategic vision of “IP everywhere”.
- 38. Inertia Inertia isthe inability or unwillingness to adapt to change. You can exploit larger rivals’ inertia as they’re often slow to respond. For example, Netflix triumphed now-bankrupt Blockbuster because the latter refused to give up its focus on retail stores. There are 3 categories of organizational inertia: Inertia of routine: An organization’s operational rhythm shapes its people’s activities and perceptions. The 1978 airline deregulation in the USA changed the rules of the game, yet many airlines continued use the same pricing models and planning tools. In 1981, the 3 major airlines (United, American, and Eastern) lost $240mil in total, while the shorter-haul airlines (Delta, Frontier, USAir etc.) made a profit. Cultural inertia refers to entrenched social behavior or meaning (e.g. work norms, values, political coalitions) that are change-resistant. To break the inertia, start with simplification: remove complex process, administrative layers and so on. You can also inject a leader who represents new norms/values, or set a challenging goal that’d push people to build new work habits and routines.
- 39. Inertia Inertia byproxy comes from a conscious decision not respond to a change/attack to avoid disrupting existing profit streams. Businesses may “allow” rivals to poach their fringe customers until they decide that it’s more important to start changing than hang on to old sources of profits. In science, entropy refers to a system’s level of disorder. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says that entropy will always increase in a physical system. So, organizations will naturally become less focused/organized with time, just like how an untended garden gets overgrown with weeds. It takes ongoing effort to maintain an organization’s purpose and processes. Watch for common signs of entropy, e.g. loss of focus in product lines, delayed shipping, and so on.
- 40. Sources of Powerin a Good Strategy Although external ideas and feedback are useful, the most vital tool to a strategist could simply be to change your own way of thinking.
- 41. The Science ofStrategy A Strategy is like a scientific hypothesis. Both operate at the edge of knowledge (between the known and unknown), with a conjecture that must be validated by logical & empirical tests. In short, a good strategy is a well- formed hypothesis of what’ll work. Treat your strategy as a hypothesis. Test your insight against established principles and accumulated business knowledge. If it passes, then test it in the market. Don’t confuse subjective opinion with fact— always test your beliefs and assumptions with observable data in the real- world. Capture proprietary information about various business elements and how they interact, so you can effectively test and refine your strategy. Treat anomalies as an opportunity to discover valuable insights. Howard Schultz noticed how Italian espresso bars had surprisingly high turnover at relatively high prices, and hypothesized that he could bring this concept to America. Schultz started his own shop, Il Giornale, and rapidly experimented with various models. He started with opera music, baristas dressed in vests and bow ties, and kept evolving until he found a viable model that led to the now-familiar Starbucks experience.
- 42. Use and Keepyour Head Apart from knowledge, a good strategist needs 3 essential Skills/habits: Overcome your myopia, Question your own judgment, and Record your judgments so you can evaluate/improve them. Use these techniques to strengthen your strategic thinking: Make a list of the 10 most important things you can do and start doing item #1. Once you see what’s important and actionable, you’ll feel more urgency to act on the vital issues. Don’t latch on to the first insight or solution that comes to mind. Test if it meets the kernel of a good strategy: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent actions. If not, review your analysis/options. Shift your focus away from what’s being done to why it’s being done. Consider the problems that you’re trying to address.
- 43. Use and Keepyour Head It’s hard to critique your own idea. So, imagine a virtual panel of experts (people with relevant expertise whom you respect) and have a mental debate with them. Rumelt’s panel includes people like Steve Jobs, Jack McDonough, Bruce Scott, David Teece, and other domain-specific experts. Once you’ve refined your idea, you can discuss them with your colleagues. Improve your judgment through practice. Consider an issue at an upcoming meeting and commit your judgments to writing. During the meeting, voice/debate those judgments to learn faster. Keep your head instead of blindly following the crowd. Even analysts, strategists and investors can be swept up by herd instincts and miss the mark altogether. Form your independent judgments about important issues.
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- 45. Learning’s for Application One of the things as I read the book is how much overlap there is between doing strategy work and design work - diagnosing the problem, creating multiple potential solutions (i.e. the double diamond ), looking at situations from multiple perspectives, weighing tradeoffs in potential solutions, and more. The core of strategy, as he defines it, is identifying and solving problems. Sound familiar? That's the core of design! He even states, "A master strategist is a designer." Rumelt goes on to hold up many examples of winning strategies and advantages from understanding customer needs, behaviors, pain points, and building for a specific customer segment. In other words, doing user-centered design. He doesn't specifically reference any UX methods, but it was clear to me that the tools of UX work apply to strategy work as well.
- 46. Learning’s for Application The overlap with design doesn't end there. He has a section about how strategy work is rooted in intuition and subjectivity. There's no way to prove a strategy is the "best" or "right" one. A strategy is a judgement of a situation and the best path forward. You can say the exact same thing about design as well. Since a strategy can't be proven to be right, Rumelt recommends considering a strategy a "hypothesis" that can be tested and refined over time. Leaders should listen for signals that their strategy is or is not working, and make adjustments accordingly. In other words, strategists should iterate on their solutions, same as designers.
- 47. Learning’s for Application Furthermore, this subjectivity causes all kinds of challenges for leaders, such as saying "no" to people, selling people on their version of reality, and so on. He doesn't talk about how to overcome these challenges, but as I read the book I realized these are issues that designers have to learn how to deal with. Effective designers have to sell their work to people to get it built. Then they have to be prepared for criticism, feedback, questions, and alternate ideas. Since their work can't be "proven" to be correct, it's open to attack from anyone and everyone. If their work gets built and shipped to customers, they still need to be open to it being "wrong" (or at least not perfect), listen to feedback from customers, and iterate further as needed. All of these soft skills are ways of dealing with the problems leaders face when implementing a strategy.
- 49. In other words,design work is strategy work. As Rumelt says, "Good strategy is design, and design is about fitting various pieces together so they work as a coherent whole."
- 50. Mail your commentsto ramaddster&gmail.com