Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters

The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: 1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical. 2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope wi

To gain this change in perspective, shift your attention from what is being done to why it is being done, from the directions chosen to the problems that these choices address.

blue-sky objective is usually a simple restatement of the desired state of affairs or of the challenge. It skips over the annoying fact that no one has a clue as to how to get there.

sources of advantage are discussed in detail in chapter 6,

If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don’t have a strategy.

Start by defining advantage in terms of surplus—the gap between buyer value and cost. Deepening an advantage means widening this gap by either increasing value to buyers, reducing costs, or both.*

The idea that coordination, by itself, can be a source of advantage is a very deep principle. It is often underappreciated because people tend to think of coordination in terms of continuing mutual adjustments among agents. Strategic coordination, or coherence, is not ad hoc mutual adjustment. It is coherence imposed on a system by policy and desig

A strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge. If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy.

These norms are established, held, and enforced daily by small social groups that take their cue from the group’s high-status member—the alpha.