Quotes About Strategy

Do you have the "right people doing the right things right" inside the organization?

SWT Instead For senior leaders, we propose replacing the SWOT with the SWT: an updated approach that identifies inherent Strengths and Weaknesses within their firms while exploring broader external Trends beyond their own industry or geography.

Jeff Bezos asks his team each week is what competitors have entered their market in the last seven days!

Individuals or organizations with too many priorities have no priorities and risk spinning their wheels and accomplishing nothing of significance.

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash flow is king." You

As a winding river must follow the contours of the landscape on its way to the ocean, a business must navigate the undulations of the marketplace on the way to its Everest.

Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless.

You can get by with decent People, Strategy, and Execution, but not a day without Cash. Cash becomes even more critical as the business scales up, since "growth sucks cash." The key is innovating ways to generate sufficient profit and cash flow internally, so you don't have to turn to banks (or sharks!) to fuel your growth.

As we've mentioned several times, the strategic planning process comprises two distinct activities: strategic thinking and execution planning. Strategic thinking is coming up with a few big-picture ideas. Execution planning is figuring out how to make them happen.

For us, a People department is less of a group of functional experts focused on engagement and employee wellbeing and more of an operational unit that serves the business and supports its strategy. All People practices, including compensation, need to create tangible value for the company's stakeholders, especially for its customers.

successful companies held three to 10 times more cash assets than average for their industries, and they did so from the time they started. (We

The 75 Measures Every Manager Needs to Know, by Bernard Marr.

1 weakness of growth firms is marketing, the #2 problem is accounting.

Individuals or organizations with too many priorities have no priorities and risk spinning their wheels and accomplishing nothing of significance. In turn, laser-focusing everyone on a single priority — today, this week, this quarter, this year, and the next decade — creates clarity and power throughout the organization.

It's time to break apart a 50-year-old business term — strategic planning — and think about it in terms of two distinct activities: strategic thinking and execution planning. Each requires two very different teams and processes.

In general, looking forward is great management; looking backward is micromanagement.

In setting Strategy, follow the definition from the great business strategist Gary Hamel. You don't have a real strategy if it doesn't pass two tests: First, what you're planning to do really matters to enough customers; and second, it differentiates you from your competition.

How can we expect our employees to be extraordinary and differentiate the company if we use the same hiring and onboarding methods as competitors?

A good plan now is better than a great plan too late.

Senior leaders need to be in the market 80% of the week, either figuratively or literally.

a conceptual framework called the Four Decisions, which emphasizes the main categories of decisions that all companies must get right. They are: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash.

I was afraid she was on something." "No, she's just being Cheryl. Her courtroom rep is that she wins cases by talking the jury to death.

Military history is just as often the tangential story of an appeasement that fails to head off warmongering as it is of an aggressive chest-thumping that prompts conflict. The destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler all would have ended earlier had any of their numerous enemies united when the odds favored them, had any listened to a Demosthenes, a Cato the Younger, or a Churchill.

Few American commentators evaluated MacArthur's strategic sense at various stages in his generalship in Korea; it was instead the perception of whether he was winning or losing that mattered most to the public.