Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Summary

Business-school professor Richard Rumelt’s attack on ‘bad strategy’: the feel-good values, buzzwords, slogans and financial targets that pass for it. Good strategy, he argues, is a focused, coherent answer to the obstacles in the way, applying strength where it counts most. He makes the case through examples from Apple and the Iraq wars to a Los Angeles school district.

Rationale

We’re warier than Rumelt of the word ‘strategy’, with its military and top-down habits. But we share his starting point: an honest reading of what’s in the way.