Quotes About Strategy

What business strategy is all about-what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning-is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors.

But the U.S. has to be careful. If our strategy depends on Sunnis doing the fighting to clear Mosul and Ramadi - and, as near as I can tell, that is the strategy - then you have to be careful that Sunnis don't perceive the U.S. to be operating arm in arm with Iran or with Iranian-backed Shiite militias that Abadi - Prime Minister Abadi is using in Iraq, so that, in effect, we're fronting for Iran.

Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought or issues.

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

The Pentagon is constantly adjusting tactics because they have the flexibility from the White House to do so. The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy. The tactics it's important that we stay there and get it done; or we leave. We're not leaving so long as I'm the president. That would be a huge mistake.

We like to believe we can break strategy down to Five Forces or Seven Ss. But you can't. Strategy is extraordinarily emotional and demanding.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.

Strategy is important, but trust is the hidden variable. On paper you can have clarity around your objectives, but in a low-trust environment, your strategy won't be executed.

The idea that relationships are not a strategy is potent; and the sad commentary proceeds to say that often relationships are seen as a strategy, a means to accomplish great things - except love and relationship are not what is really wanted. We want to appear relational so people will like what we have to offer. It's the difference between wanting a good marriage and loving the person you married.

Japan's diplomatic efforts could have had a broader international perspective. Relations with the U.S. are, of course, the cornerstone of Japan's diplomacy, but the U.S. acts on its global strategy. For instance, Washington suddenly got closer to China in the early 1970s as part of its strategy against the Soviet Union.

Impact in advertising today is 80 percent strategy, 20 percent copy. This makes it nearly impossible for good copy to compensate for weak strategy.

I gotta new strategy it's called no strategy. And I gotta way to sell more music its called make better music.

People believe that management consultants are mostly useless parasites. Up until about 1980 it was consultants more than anyone else who came up with the critical concepts behind strategy. The history of strategy suggests there are lots of things consultants can do for a company that the company can't typically do for itself.

We need to ask ourselves a question: Do we trust God? Is he not the same yesterday, today, and forever? And if he is, then how is compromise a strategy? It's not a strategy, it's wholesale surrender.

The pursuit of the vibrant seems to be the universal job description of the nation's city planners nowadays. It is also part of the Obama administration's economic recovery strategy for the nation.

I tried to come up with a definition of this new paradigm in six articles entitled "Russia after Putin." I would consider Russia's integration into Europe the most important element of this strategy.

What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.

Donald Trump has a grand direction. He doesn't have a grand strategy. He wants to re-establish American authority and power and to relaunch the American economy.

The foes now are universal - poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations. Classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global or local, and tackle them before they become disasters.

Democrats are just as divided as Republicans these days. Embarrassed by their election losses, they are fighting over everything from their diagnosis of why Trump beat them in 2016 to how much to stake themselves on an oust-him-at-all-costs strategy now. Their internal battles may not be as sexy as the unprecedented hostile takeover of the GOP by an outsider president not beholden to it - yet they are just as consequential.

The customer demands simplicity, that organizations organize around them. Easy to use is a customer tsunami ripping across the world. Ease of use and simplicity must now be at the heart of organizational strategy.

What marketers used to do is make average products for average people. That's what mass marketing is. They would ignore the geeks, and - God forbid - the laggards. It was all about going for the center. I don't think that's the strategy we want to use anymore.

Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!

Consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution.

It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that tells you what reform measures you should follow and in what sequence.

Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy

Occasionally we are asked whether it would make sense to modify our investment strategy to perform better in today's financial climate. Our answer, as you might guess, is: No! It would be easyfor us to capitulate to the runaway bull market in growth and technology stocks. And foolhardy. And irresponsible. And unconscionable. It is always easiest to run with the herd; at times, it can take a deep reservoir of courage and conviction to stand apart from it. Yet distancing yourself from the crowd is an essential component of long-term investment success.

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Don't have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

I don't believe that military intervention is always the right approach. What we need is a comprehensive strategy, one that advances democratization, economic reforms and equal rights for women.

Organizations aren't loyal; they can't be. They have to be nimble, they have to change. That means everybody in every organization will have one eye on his or her own brand, and the other eye on the organization of which he or she is a part. And the first loyalty - self-loyalty - is becoming more and more dominant, simply as a survival strategy. I'm in no way blaming anyone here; this is just simply a fact of life.

Do not analyze things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, "Ready, fire, aim." Do it first , then make adjustments. The answer lies in action-not in words.

The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation.

Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year's harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalisitic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction.

I don't have a strategy. I am my own person. So if people disagree with the opinion of my father and want to dislike me because I'm his daughter, then I'm probably not going to be able to discourage them from that.

Many university presidents assume the language and behavior of CEOs and in doing so they are completely reneging on the public mission of the universities. The state is radically defunding public universities and university presidents, for the most part, rather than defending higher education as a public good, are trying to privatize their institutions in order to remove them from the political control of state governments. This is not a worthy or productive strategy.

When you lack cohesion, it becomes difficult to have a clear marketing strategy.

People think this is all about the top players hitting tenins balls and they talk about technique and strategy and how important that is. But they don't understand the essence of competition. This is one-on-one, two players out there fighting each other with everything they have, trying to bring the best out of themselves. And the difference at this level of the game is all in the head and in the heart.

The best strategy is always to be very strong.

Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly.

Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it's about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first.

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.

Modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, I didn't intend to cause global warning, it's not part of my plan, then we realize it's part of our defacto plan because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan.

Mating Strategy is influenced by the cardinal fact that women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived. In courtship women consistently emphasize commitment of resources and material security.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Strategy is the craft of the warrior.

The American president has to both keep our families safe and make the economy grow in a way that helps everyone, not just those at the top. That`s the job. I have a strategy to combat and defeat ISIS without getting us involved in another ground war. And I have plans to raise incomes and deal with a lot of the problems that keep families up at night.

Russia has a strategy of creating the conditions that give rise to corruption, then exploiting that corruption to its own benefit.