Good Strategy Bad Strategy
About this book
Rumelt separates strategy from goal setting and aspiration. A strategy has a kernel of three parts, being a diagnosis that names the challenge, a guiding policy for dealing with it, and coherent actions that carry the policy out. Bad strategy shows itself through fluff, failure to face the problem, mistaking goals for strategy, and bad objectives. The second half covers sources of advantage and the cognitive habits that produce good diagnoses.
Description via Product Digest.
Topics
Related concepts
- How to Communicate Product Strategy with a One Page BriefWrite a strategy brief that explains the problem, choice, evidence and implications, then test whether colleagues can use it in a real decision.
- Good Strategy vs Bad Strategy: How to Review a Product StrategyRecognise vague language, avoided problems, goals presented as strategy and objectives that cannot guide work. Includes a practical document review.
- Product Strategy Non Goals: How to Say No and Handle ExceptionsWrite clear exclusions with a reason, owner and review condition. Respond to competing requests without turning a temporary choice into a permanent ban.
- Opportunity scoringComparing candidate opportunities against consistent criteria so the choice is made on the same basis every time, and so a rejected opportunity can be shown why it was rejected.
- Strategic alignmentHow a project connects to the organisation's strategy through the portfolio and programme layers above it, and what to do when the strategy moves while the project is still running.
- Distinctive competenciesThe things an organisation can do that competitors cannot easily copy, and the filter that decides which market problems are worth this company solving.
- What Is Product Strategy? How to Make and Explain Strategic ChoicesDefine a product strategy with a target customer, a reason to choose the product, resource choices and evidence. Includes a worked example and a strategy writing exercise.
- Why Product Strategies Fail and How to Run a Strategy ReviewDistinguish delivery problems, weak adoption and unsupported strategic assumptions before deciding whether to improve execution or change direction.
- Rumelt's Strategy Kernel Explained with a Product ExampleRichard Rumelt's three part structure for a strategy, covering the diagnosis of the obstacle, the guiding policy chosen to deal with it and the coherent actions that carry the policy out, and why the three have to chain.