“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.

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American economist 1942

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“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 (1942) American economist

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

“What strategy does the brain use to read itself out?”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)
Context: What strategy does the brain use to read itself out? That question, which is central to the unitary nature of conscious experience, remains one of the many unresolved mysteries of the new science of mind.

“To be a great leader, one needs to have good strategies, be knowledgeable and able to predict the future.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/110479

“Say what you will about organized crime, at least it’s organized.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 2 (p. 20)

“What looks like a man is only a representation of a man who does what the organization requires. He (or it) does not run the machine; he tends it.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter V : Anatomy Of The Corporate State, p. 107

“Back in the mid-1990s I was researching strategy in the global electronics industry. I interviewed 20 to 30 executives, CEOs, and division managers and asked fairly simple questions. Which company was the leader in their market? How did that company become the leader? What’s their own company’s strategy?
I saw an interesting pattern. Most executives easily explained how companies became market leaders: Some sort of window of opportunity opened, and the leader was the company that was the first to successfully jump through that window. Not exactly the first mover but the first to get it right.
But when I asked these same executives about their own strategies, I heard a lot about doorknob polishing. They were doing 360-degree feedback, forming alliances, outsourcing, cutting costs, and so on. None of them even mentioned taking a good position quickly when the industry changes.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

About strategy starts with identifying changes, and companies taking position (1)
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: What is strategy?, 1996, p. 70

“In complex environments, individuals are not fully able to analyze the situation and calculate their optimal strategy. Instead they can be expected to adapt their strategy over time based upon what has been effective and what has not.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Chap. 1 : Evolving New Strategies

Adapted from Robert Axelrod, “The Evolution of Strategies in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma,” in Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing, ed. Lawrence Davis (London: Pitman; Los Altos, Calif.: Morgan Kaufman, 1987)
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

““You aren’t doing much for morale, Sidewise.”
Sidewise shot back, “And what about my morale? It does me no damn good to ignore what’s blindingly obvious all around us.””

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 17 “A Long Shadow” section II (p. 539)

“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.”

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