Sublime

Effective strategy emerges out of an exploration of challenges, ambitions, resources, and competition. By confronting the situation actually being faced, a talented leader creates a strategy to further some elements out of the whole bundle of ambitions.

A good strategy defines a critical challenge. What is more, it builds a bridge between that challenge and action, between desire and immediate objectives that lie within grasp. Thus, the objectives a good strategy sets should stand a good chance of being accomplished, given existing resources and competence.

A good strategy does more than urge us forward toward a goal or vision. A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.

A good strategy recognizes the nature of the challenge and offers a way of surmounting it.

The purpose of good strategy is to offer a potentially achievable way of surmounting a key challenge.

In all cases, strategy is the process of confronting and solving critical challenges. I emphasize this because there is a widespread misconception that a business strategy is some sort of long-range sketch of a desired destination. I encourage you to think of strategy as a journey through, over, and around a sequence of challenges.

the kernel of strategy—a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action—applies to any complex setting. Here, as in so many situations, the required actions were not mysterious. The impediment was the hope that the pain of those actions could, somehow, be avoided.

Which is what grand strategy is meant to prevent. I’ll define that term, for the purposes of this book, as the alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities. If you seek ends beyond your means, then sooner or later you’ll have to scale back your ends to fit your means. Expanding means may attain more ends, but

strategy is a mixture of policy and action designed to surmount a crucial challenge