Richard Rumelt: Action

Richard Rumelt is American economist. Explore interesting quotes on action.
Richard Rumelt: 50   quotes 0   likes

“Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 20
Context: Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy. Despite this, most organizations will not create focused strategies. Instead, they will generate laundry lists of desirable outcomes and, at the same time, ignore the need for genuine competence in coordinating and focusing their resources. Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.

“A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge. It is not defined by the pay grade of the person authorizing the action.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 92

Personality

“For Schumpeter the most important firms are those that serve as the vehicles for action of the real drivers of the system — the innovating entrepreneurs.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: "Towards a strategic theory of the firm." 1997, p. 134

“Despite the roar of voices wanting to equate strategy with ambition, leadership, “vision,” planning, or the economic logic of competition, strategy is none of these. The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 3

Way

“Nelson’s challenge was that he was outnumbered. His strategy was to risk his lead ships in order to break the coherence of his enemy’s fleet. With coherence lost, he judged, the more experienced English captains would come out on top in the ensuing melee. Good strategy almost always looks this simple and obvious and does not take a thick deck of PowerPoint slides to explain. It does not pop out of some "strategic management" tool, matrix, chart, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, a talented leader identifi es the one or two critical issues in the situation—the pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of effort—and then focuses and concentrates action and resources on them.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 1-2

Effort

“The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 7

“Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy. Despite this, most organizations will not create focused strategies. Instead, they will generate laundry lists of desirable outcomes and, at the same time, ignore the need for genuine competence in coordinating and focusing their resources. Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.”

Richard Rumelt

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 20

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