Quotes About Strategy

There are good reasons for the superiority of if/when-then plans: the specific sequencing of elements within the plans can help us defeat the traditional enemies of goal achievement. The "if/when-then" wording is designed to put us on high alert for a particular time or circumstance when a productive action could be performed. We become prepared, first, to notice the favorable time or circumstance and, second, to associate it automatically and directly with desired conduct.

Responsibility. Those subjects facing the opponent who used the retreating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal.

Mostrar um produto barato primeiro e depois um caro fará com que este último pareça ainda mais caro.

Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations.

It is one of the secrets of happiness that you know which battles you can win and which you can't.

There's no problem with borrowing from the future in order to finance investments in the future.

China has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for their shareholders. No contest.

China has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for their shareholders.

Great ends demand great means.

I've concluded, after many years, that my mind works by process of elimination. Problem is, it hasn't eliminated anything yet.

The perfect family board game is one that can be played each time with fewer pieces.

Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.

The commonwealth of Venice in their armory have this inscription: "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war."

But I can write my tests later", you say. No, you can't. Not really. Oh, you can write some tests later. You can even approach high coverage later if you are careful to measure it. But the tests you write after the fact are defense. Tests you write first are offense. After-the-fact tests are written by someone who is already vested in the code and already knows how the problem was solved. There's just no way those tests can be anywhere near as incisive as tests written first.

What if your company has made a commitment to a certain database, or a certain web server, or a certain framework? A good architect pretends that the decision has not been made, and shapes the system such that those decisions can still be deferred or changed for as long as possible. A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not made.

The perfect kind of architecture decision is the one which never has to be made

The primary cost of maintenance is in spelunking and risk. Spelunking is the cost of digging through the existing software, trying to determine the best place and the best strategy to add a new feature or to repair a defect.

If you can develop the high-level policy without committing to the details that surround it, you can delay and defer decisions about those details for a long time. And the longer you wait to make those decisions, the more information you have with which to make them properly.

Event sourcing is a strategy wherein we store the transactions, but not the state. When state is required, we simply apply all the transactions from the beginning of time.

A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not made.

Think about how you can preserve the use-case emphasis of your architecture. Develop a strategy that prevents the framework from taking over that architecture.

The Bombing Two Dauntlesses were launched with 12 percent less than maximum fuel, which would have critical impact later in the morning.

Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that Fletcher did not lose the Battle of the Coral Sea at the tactical level, despite Morison's judgment to the contrary, because he was sufficiently cautious most of the time and sufficiently lucky when he was not. Hardly a glamorous way to win a battle, but victory has never been a beauty contest.

The importance of ships employing these optimum tactics is illustrated by the fact that only 29 percent of the dives on ships using the proper tactics, as defined above, were successful whereas 47 percent of the dives were successful on ships using other than these tactics.14