Stefan
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However, I rarely had a chance to identify what strategy constitutes of, how it is generated, and how it is executed successfully. Many people share ‘They did this so well, you should do this too!’-stories on all kinds of forums. Being Austrian (or maybe being a country boy) I always had a healthy amount of suspicion around these stories. Why would I just copy something? And how would that make me / my team / my product successful? I missed the anatomy lesson of the specimen these posts wanted me to become. I missed the how, the concrete steps to follow.
The absence of bad strategy isn’t good strategy!
After a brief phase of corporate blame (the inevitable moment where you allow your spoiled self to say ‘the company should teach me this or that’) I had an epiphany: while practicing good strategy might be the final goal, there must be someone out there who shares my desire for learning what ‘good strategy’ even means, how it can be understood, and ideally recreated and applied. Low and behold, there is! As an added bonus, the work also covers what bad strategy is. My gut feeling was in for a treat! What I felt was fluffy, high-level, soft and useless hot air gets called out as such you even learn how to identify and quantify the risk of bad strategy. What a delight.
Mr. Rumelt does a great job interweaving personal stories and anecdotes with solid scientific reasoning what good strategy is, what it is not, and how to create good strategy. He exercises case studies, and takes us from the classroom to the executive boardroom, and back, with every stop in-between. It helps a great deal to hear a piece of theory and have it applied in practical context. My takeaway: he applied good strategy when writing this book!
To me, the book provides a clear concept of what good strategy is, what is is made of, and how to construct good strategy in various situations. It is doing what good scientific works do: provide insights into the general construct, the guiding principles of a topic, so it can be learned, applied, and practiced in your specific situation. Moreover, Mr. Rumelt does a bit of extra homework. He helps us understand good strategy by clearly articulating what it is not, i.e. bad strategy. I haven’t found this method of exclusion often applied to topics as broad as ‘strategy’. They certainly help keep us honest, as they take most of what I might have also labeled as ‘strategy’ (loads of business fluff and hot-air) off the table. In a good way. In a practical, logical, and honest sort of way. As if you would be able to sit down, privately, with the person who just unloaded a bunch of fluff, and say: ‘Now, for real, what are going to do here?’.
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