Quotes About Strategy

Measurement and Leverage To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect.

There are only two things you have to know about business: build something users love, and make more than you spend. If you get these two right, you'll be ahead of most startups. You can figure out the rest as you go.

And you had better have a convincing explanation of why your technology would be hard to duplicate. Otherwise as soon as some big company becomes aware of it, they'll make their own, and with their brand name, capital, and distribution clout, they'll take away your market overnight. You'd be like guerillas caught in the open field by regular army forces.

Treat a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured by number of users.

Steve Jobs saved a company that was in a terminal decline. And not merely in the way a turnaround specialist does, by cutting costs; he had to decide what Apple's next products should be. Few others could have done it.

Any political analyst who didn't see this coming should find a different profession. After all, "starve the beast"—cut taxes on the rich, then use the resulting deficits as an excuse to hack away at the safety net—has been G.O.P. strategy for decades.

Businesspeople are not used to thinking about closed systems;economists are.

It was the perfect illustration of the strategy famously described in Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? in which Republicans would mobilize voters with social issues, but invariably turn postelection to serving the interests of corporations and the 1 percent.

Solomon's Laws 1. When the law doesn't work...work the law.

Successful stock-picking isn't mysterious, but it does take some time, effort, and analysis. And the effort is worthwhile because stocks are a convenient and important part of most investors' portfolios.

What should you do? Become an investor with a time horizon greater than one year (the emphasis is on "greater"). Give your investments time to grow.

Every person has short-term goals. Some are modest, such as setting aside money for a vacation next month or paying for medical bills. Other short-term goals are more ambitious, such as accruing funds for a down payment to purchase a new home within six months. Whatever the expense or purchase, you need a predictable accumulation of cash soon. If this sounds like your situation, stay away from the stock market!

Monitor your stocks. Hold on to stocks that continue to have growth potential, and sell those stocks with declining prospects.

When figuring out what to do in the investment world, most professionals use one of two basic approaches: fundamental analysis and technical analysis (many use some combination of the two).

Some techniques may work for one venue and not another. Streamline the techniques you use and practice into a simple and comprehensive package. If not, you will have a cluttered toolbox that will not work for you. You will not find the right tool when you need it.

If you stay friendly with monsters you can find cracks in their armor to exploit. Shut them out and they can kill you without a second thought. I reminded myself of this over and over.

wily minds and cold hearts were the combination Bronowsky found most common in English administrators.

the presumptuousness of Hillary Clinton, who was so certain of winning that she campaigned halfheartedly

Inspiration is the most important part of our digital strategy.

A Warrior of Light never resorts to trickery, but he knows how to distract his opponent.

The best way to weaken one's enemy was to get him to believe that you were on his side.

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.

Be transparent in your actions, and secret in your plans

In war, the key to victory is the ability to surprise one's opponent.