Four Strategic Mistakes.

Fortunately, a leader does not need to get it totally right—the organization’s strategy merely has to be more right than those of its rivals. If you can peer into the fog of change and see 10 percent more clearly than others see, then you may gain an edge.

Strategies focus resources, energy, and attention on some objectives rather than others. Unless collective ruin is imminent, a change in strategy will make some people worse off. Hence, there will be powerful forces opposed to almost any change in strategy.

Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.

Even when faced with overwhelming change, day in and day out we fall prey to the enormous gravitational pull of business as usual. Despite the best intentions, business leaders spend the majority of their time focusing on tactical issues, delivering short-term results to investors, and managing daily fire drills rather than shaping strategy and def

Being strategic is being less myopic—less shortsighted—than others. You must perceive and take into account what others do not, be they colleagues or rivals. Being less myopic is not the same as pretending you can see the future. You must work with the facts on the ground, not the vague outlines of the distant future.