Quotes About Strategy

Once you learn to think like the people with the checkbook, you're one step closer to success.

Improving our national intelligence capabilities should remain a top priority and a continual process.

You can't build a small giant if you're in an industry where your success depends on how big your company becomes.

The mistake they make grows partly out of their tendency to regard the exit as simply an event, and a relatively distant one at that. But the exit is actually a critical phase of a business owner's journey and an integral part of the entrepreneurial experience. "It's like passing the 26.2-mile mark of a marathon, or crossing home plate after a home run

Baseball and football are very different games. In a way, both of them are easy. Football is easy if you're crazy as hell. Baseball is easy if you've got patience. They'd both be easier for me if I were a little more crazy — and a little more patient.

If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.

That is why effective organizations have monthly board meetings.

The chairman must take the lead responsibility for the board development processes.

Every director needs an annual personal development plan agreed with the chairman.

Strategic thinking is the director's role. Planning is an exclusively executive role.

trying to avoid here is the rush into planning projects and budgets at the expense of strategic thought

the wider consequences of a strategic decision needs destructive testing, especially by the board.

interactive graphic systems, instead of just lists of numbers, should greatly enhance the quality of boardroom debates.

test is: can the key trends be shown to the board on no more than two sides of A4 paper?

If the board is not taking the company purposefully into the future, who is?

Direction-givers need a 'brain-on', rather than a hands-on attitude.

Risk is essential to an enterprise. If we had full knowledge of the future there would be no risk.

The basis of intimidation as I practiced it was mystery. I wanted the hitter to know nothing about me.

McLain this early in the game? It was a loaded

Trailing 24–23 in the fourth quarter, and backed up on their own 1-yard line, the Patriots were forced to punt—only they didn't! Instead of punting, Belichick instructed long snapper Lonie Paxton to snap the ball out of the end zone. That would give the Broncos two points for the safety and a three-point lead, but the Patriots would be able to punt the ball from their 20-yard line instead of the back of their end zone.

If we cannot provide clients with the one thing they really want from us -- creativity -- there is little future for the ad industry as it is currently configured.

Marketers prefer clear answers that are wrong to vague answers that are right.

What makes their new campaign so awful is that they're trying to convince business travelers that flying Southwest will make us more "productive." Right. That's the big airline issue for me. Not price. Not schedule. Not comfort. Not reliability. "Bob, what airline you wanna take?" "I don't know. Which one makes me more productive?" It's such a moronic strategy, it can only have come from a trained marketing professional.

Creativity is what happens after the strategy is done. Creativity is the process that transforms a strategy into a terrific ad.