Quotes about Strategy
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Here are some quotes from my reading and my life to set fires in your thinking about strategy.
"Recently I asked three corporate executives what decisions they had made in the last year that would not have been made were it not for their corporate plans. All had difficulty identifying one such decision. Since all of the plans are marked 'secret' or 'confidential,' I asked them how their competitors might benefit from possession of their plans. Each answered with embarrassment that their competitors would not benefit."
Russell Ackoff
"At Google we have a three year financial plan, but a one year strategic plan."
Eric Schmidt
"Success is about ingredients and execution."
Thomas Keller
"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."
Michael Porter
"You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless."
Charles de Gaulle
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Winston Churchill
"The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision. What it needs right now are tough-minded, market-driven, highly effective strategies."
Lou Gerstner
"In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward ... You pick a general direction and implement like hell."
Jack Welch
So … what do you think?
We like the quote from Welch best.
We don't really know the context around the quote from Gerstner, but it's hard for us to agree with it. We take the view that the vision (the picked "general direction" from Welch's quote) drives strategy.
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I believe Herb Kelleher's strategic plan consisted of "doing things". That speaks volumes for me. Mission and vision statements and SWOT analyses are great, but every now and then you have to actually take a break from the fluff and get something done.
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You're right, Deron. Here's the actual quote.
"We’ve never done the long-range planning that is customary in many businesses. When planning became big in the airline community, one of the analysts came up to me and said, “Herb, I understand you don’t have a plan.” I said that we have the most unusual plan in the industry: Doing things. That’s our plan. What we do by way of strategic planning is we define ourselves and then we redefine ourselves."
If you want to read the rest of the interview it's on the Strategy and Business site.
Thanks for stopping by.
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Wally -
At the risk of sounding like 1) a nay-sayer, or 2) a know-it-all, I have to say that I disagree with some part of all these quotes.
And I believe it's primarily because most of them posit a false (in my mind) dichotomy between vision and action, strategy and results.
Being truly strategic encompasses both aspiration and outcome. People who really operate strategically, in my experience, first look objectively at their current reality (where they're starting from) then clarify the future they're trying to create (the much-maligned "vision" - Welch's "general direction").
Then they look with a clear and unflinching eye at the obstacles between point A and point B.
Then, before they "implement like hell," they agree on some core directional choices - some strategies - they think will best move them toward that future. This, I believe, is the positive frame of Porter's "choosing what not to do" - and in that I agree with him. But I've seen that it works better (given human wiring) if people can choose what not to do based on having good, solid vision and strategy as a positive filter.
THEN, once those things are clearly defined -- where are we now, what's our hoped-for future, what's in the way, and what's our broad strategic path -- then you can create specific tactics to walk down that path. In other words, you can implement like hell!
(And, PS - now that GE is a client of ours, I can see the trouble they get themselves in by not always agreeing on strategy before they leap to tactics and start "implementing like hell" - and they see it, too!)
xo
Erika
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Thanks for that thoughtful post, Erika. It's exactly what I was hoping someone would share when I put up a page of quotes.
I love the phrase about "aspiration and outcome." We could also call it "the current state and the end state." There's always a tension between reality as it is and as we would like it.
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Think Erika might be missing the point. What she says makes absolute sense, but the thread that runs through most of these quotes is the tendency of large corporations to become so enamored of their "vision" or "strategy" that they lose track of the business reality and the need for every action to bear fruits that accrue to the customers, shareholders, and employees.
Vision and Strategy are great. Without execution, valuless.
In fact, the Marines have a doctrine that speaks to the fact that a mediocre plan, swiftly executed, is superior to the perfect plan that is not executed in time.
jna
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