I used to think that all generic strategy advice was pointless. After all, the point of a strategy is to achieve a thing, and to achieve a thing you just think hard about how to best do it and then work hard to do it. I said this to my friend Dewi, who said that this is mostly true, but there is an exception: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Dewi was right.

The book has some principles. In particular: a good strategy should include a diagnosis of the problem, an overall guiding policy, and a set of coherent actions. A laundry list of actions, a goal, or a vague idea of which direction to move in are not strategies.

But most of the book's value is reading a bunch of examples and soaking up the thinking style embedded in them. Therefore, this review is mostly a series [...]

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Outline:

(01:27) Example

(03:24) The basics

(03:27) The two fundamental things

(03:52) Coherence

(03:56) Example: the obvious

(05:20) Example: Jobs waits

(06:00) Strategy is Unexpected

(08:24) Advantage

(11:05) The kernel of good strategy

(11:56) Diagnosis

(11:59) Example: US Cold War policy

(15:06) Example: IBM

(17:28) Guiding policy

(18:24) Example: corner grocery store

(21:51) Coherent action

(21:54) Action requires doing something

(26:45) Coherence

(30:04) Sources of advantage

(33:02) Dynamics

(38:19) Other random vignettes I enjoyed

(38:23) Incentives arent enough, improvement is possible

(39:33) Almost everyone picks the first idea that comes to mind

(42:03) Panel of experts

(42:56) Carnegie and the strategy consultant

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.