Quotes About Strategy

And what if they win?" Burn demanded. "They won't," Scarlet said. "But of course killing them ourselves is a solid backup plan." "Excuse me," Tsunami interrupted. "You know we're right over here, right? Don't you want to hatch your evil plans somewhere more secretive?

You also should avoid talking to your targets, in case you find out that they're beautiful, sarcastic, and fascinating. For instance.

Act smart, stay alive, stick together but don't be an idiot — those are our basic rules.

We need him out of the kingdom," Snowflake suggested. "Or dead.

With punching and biting?" Swordtail suggested hopefully. "And maybe some venomous caterpillars?" "I like the way you think," Sundew said. "But they're centipedes, dingbat." "Or," Blue interjected, "is there a way to sneak in where nobody gets hurt?

The Bush National Security Strategy is the imperial edict of a superpower out to exploit its present supremacy to make itself permanent Lord Protector of the universe.

implementation science is more important than decision science.

Our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign." It

An organization has integrity—is healthy—when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

Most organizations I've worked with have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus they need to succeed.

Second, and this is certainly related, those executives don't see the company's reason for existing as having any practical implications for the way they make decisions and run the organization.

Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two or three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place.

Weekly Tactical meeting should last between forty-five and ninety minutes, depending on its frequency, and should include a few critical elements, including the following:

Meeting #3:The Monthly Strategic This is the most interesting and in many ways the most important type of meeting any team has. It is also the most fun. It is where executives wrestle with, analyze, debate, and decide upon critical issues (but only a few) that will affect the business in fundamental ways. Monthly Strategic meetings allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns.

Ad Hoc Strategic Meetings In some cases, a strategic or critical issue that gets raised in a Weekly Tactical meeting cannot wait for the next Monthly Strategic meeting on the schedule. Still, that doesn't mean it should be taken up during that Weekly Tactical.

Another challenge in making strategic meetings work is the failure to do research and preparation ahead of time. The quality of a strategic discussion, and the decision that results from it, are improved greatly by a little preliminary work. This eliminates the all-too-common reliance on anecdotal decision making. The key to ensuring that preparation occurs is to let team members know as far in advance as possible what issues will be discussed during the Monthly or Ad Hoc Strategic.

At its core, organizational health is about integrity, but not in the ethical or moral way that integrity is defined so often today. An organization has integrity—is healthy—when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

we have to ideate, activate, and implement.

But organizational clarity is not merely about choosing the right words to describe a company's mission, strategy, or values; it is about agreeing on the fundamental concepts that drive it.

An organization that has achieved clarity has a sense of unity around everything it does. It aligns its resources, especially the human ones, around common concepts, values, definitions, goals, and strategies, thereby realizing the synergies that all great companies must achieve.

The key to managing this challenge, of course, is to identify a reasonable number of issues that will have the greatest possible impact on the success of your organization, and then spend most of your time thinking about, talking about, and working on those issues.

I believe that all successful organizations share two qualities: they are smart, and they are healthy. An organization demonstrates that it is smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over its rivals. It demonstrates that it is healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.

I have found that most leaders spend the majority of their time and energy making their organizations smarter, with relatively little effort directed toward making them healthier.

as odd as it may seem, it is actually more important for leaders to focus on making their organizations healthy than on making them smart.