Thinking books · Strategy & competition · Richard Rumelt, 2011
Good Strategy / Bad Strategy — the big ideas
What actually makes something a strategy, and why most documents called strategy are not one.
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The big ideas
A strategy has three parts: a diagnosis of the difficulty, a guiding policy for dealing with it, and coherent actions that support each other. Missing any one is bad strategy.
Bad strategy is identifiable: goals mistaken for strategy, refusing to face the difficulty, and fluff that sounds sophisticated and says nothing.
The diagnosis is the hardest and most valuable part — naming the crux of the difficulty rather than listing symptoms.
Strategy requires sacrifice. A plan where nothing is given up is a list of aspirations with a cover page.
Practise it — no need to have read it
Take a plan you are working to. Write its diagnosis in one sentence. If you cannot, that is the finding.
A hint: Then ask what is sacrificed. If nothing, it is a goal rather than a strategy.
Where it shows up in real life
- Company or team strategy
- Personal direction
- Evaluating a plan someone gave you
Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.
Thinking methods from this book
- Diagnosis, policy, action — The three parts a real strategy has, and whose absence makes one a list of hopes.
The thinking it builds
- Strategic Thinking — Think beyond the immediate next step