Quotes About Strategy

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want, an answer that might wreck your case.

A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it's wiser to know them.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food.

but after years of tactical study Jean Louise knew her enemy. Although she could rout her, Jean Louise had not yet learned how to repair the enemy's damage.

I was becoming nervous. Atticus seemed to know what he was doing - but it seemed to me that he'd gone frog-sticking without a light. Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want, an answer that might wreck your case.

Never ask a witness a question when you don't already know the answer

Indeed, in many situations wisdom lies in being strategic rather than spontaneous. This is especially true when we're dealing with a difficult person, a hot issue, or a tense situation. The enormous challenge is to make wise decisions about how and when to say what to whom, and even before that, to know what we really want to say and what we hope to accomplish by saying it.

Hard work applied properly and intelligently, and thinking in an organized manner, must lead to success.

Sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut.

I study the chessboard and concede defeat. You can gain yourself in five moves says the Colonel. Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.

Affirmative. A hard-and-fast rule in business is to never accept the first offer. Remember that, and you will never go wrong.

But problem solving, however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results.

Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization. It has to do this continuously and with the kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it.

Harvard Business School Press

Effective strategy planners spread strategy reviews throughout the year rather than squeeze them into a two- or three-month window. This allows senior executives to focus on one issue at a time until they reach a decision or set of decisions.

Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course. He needs to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how he'll spend his time.

In 2002, after acquiring and integrating gum-maker Adams—a move that significantly expanded Cadbury's product and geographic reach—the

By embracing decision-focused planning, companies will almost certainly find that the quantity and quality of their decisions will improve.

The trick in decision making is to avoid becoming either mindlessly global or hopelessly local. If

Single male CEOs take bigger financial risks in order to appear more attractive.

what should he do to make strategic planning drive more, better, and faster decisions? Like

More than anything else, this disconnect—between the way planning works and the way decision making happens—explains the frustration, if not outright antipathy, most executives feel toward strategic planning.

they've also changed the nature of top management's discussions about strategy—from "review and approve" to "debate and decide