Good Strategy / Bad Strategy

6 ideas

1. The kernel: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action

   A good strategy has three parts: a diagnosis that names what is going on and simplifies a complex situation into its critical challenge, a guiding policy that sets an overall approach for dealing with that challenge, and a set of coherent actions that carry out the policy with coordinated resources. Leave out any one of the three and what remains is not a strategy but a wish, a slogan, or a to-do list.

2. The four hallmarks of bad strategy

   Bad strategy shows up in four recognizable forms. Fluff is jargon that sounds profound but says nothing. The second is a failure to face the challenge at all. The third is mistaking goals for strategy, as in 'grow 20%'. The fourth is bad strategic objectives, meaning targets that are either a jumbled 'dog's dinner' list or so ambitious they are impossible to act on.

3. Strategy requires choice, and choice creates losers

   Bad strategy is common because real strategy means focusing, and focusing means rejecting some goals, projects, and constituencies. Leaders avoid those hard choices by writing broad goal lists that keep everyone included. The resulting document offends no one and directs nothing.

4. Strategy as leverage on a pivot point

   Look for the point where a concentrated application of resources produces an outsized effect. That might be an asymmetry, a bottleneck, or an insight others have missed. Strategic power comes from anticipation and focus on that narrow point, not from spreading effort evenly across every front.

5. Nelson at Trafalgar breaks the line

   In 1805 the outnumbered British fleet under Nelson did not fight in the standard parallel battle line. It sailed in two columns straight into the Franco-Spanish line, splitting it into disordered pieces. Nelson deliberately accepted exposure on the approach, betting on superior British gunnery and seamanship in close melee. The move shows a diagnosed advantage turned into a risky but coherent design rather than a conventional plan.

6. Proximate objectives make strategy actionable

   A proximate objective is a target close enough to be reached with existing resources and knowledge. It turns a vague aspiration into concrete, feasible work. By resolving ambiguity, it lets the organization act and learn, rather than stall before a goal no one knows how to pursue.

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