Quotes About Strategy

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company.

Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

A good rule of thumb is a 10- to 25-year horizon, perhaps longer if the mission is particularly challenging. Of course, some missions can be fulfilled faster than ten years, and it may be appropriate and effective to have a short time frame. Whatever time-length mission you set, be sure to recognize when you've fulfilled it and, most important, set a new one. Otherwise, you may fall into one of the most dangerous of traps: the "We've Arrived Syndrome.

The best BHAGs make you think big. They force you to engage in both long-term building and short-term intensity. The only way to achieve a BHAG is with a relentless sense of urgency, day after day, week after week, month after month, for years. What do you need to do today, with monomaniacal focus, and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that to defy the probabilities and ultimately achieve your BHAG?

Purpose is a motivating factor, not a differentiating factor. It's entirely possible for two companies to have the same purpose. Your mission, on the other hand, will certainly differentiate you from everyone else.

Practical Discipline #3: Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

To be effective, a vision must fulfill two key criteria: it must be clear (well understood) and shared by all the key people in the organization.

What we did was so simple, and we kept it simple. It

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it.

focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.

first who... then what" start-up.

The key point of this chapter is not just the idea of getting the right people on the team. The key point is that "who" questions come before "what" decisions—before vision, before strategy, before organization structure, before tactics. First who, then what—as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.

Reichardt kept people relentlessly focused on the simple hedgehog idea

Level 5 leaders confront the brutal facts before they set vision and strategy, and they create a climate where the truth is heard. Failure to confront the brutal facts is a precursor to catastrophic decline, always.

A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deeply understanding the intersection of the following three circles: (1) what you're deeply passionate about, (2) what you can be the best in the world at, and (3) what best drives your economic engine.

Strategy is simply the basic methodology you intend to apply to attain your company's current mission. "This is how we will achieve our mission." That, in a nutshell, is strategy. There's no mystery to it. It's not a difficult concept.

A company should not change its core values in response to market changes; rather, it should change markets, if necessary, to remain true to its core values.

And if you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business cannot form the basis of your Hedgehog Concept.

The good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.

The problem is not the statistical odds; the problem is that people are squandering their time and resources on the wrong things.

The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The

James C. Collins