Quotes About Strategy

The single most damaging misconception about strategy is that it is a set of financial performance goals. The so-called "strategies" created by many managements are nothing more than three-to-five year financial performance forecasts. They are then labeled "strategy" and shipped off to the board of directors which goes through the motions of discussing how big the numbers are. Strategy is not your aspirations. Strategy is concerned with how you will arrange your actions and resources to punch through the challenges you face.

If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.

My strategy is that I actually have absolutely no strategy.

Designing a winning strategy is the art of asking questions, experimenting and then constantly renewing the thinking process by questioning the answers. No matter how good today's strategy is, you must always keep reinventing it.

In keeping with his cryptic nature, all your Story Weaver said was 'The horses know where to go.' It's certainly not a military strategy I would use, but I've learned that the south uses its own strategy. And, strangely enough, it works.

People sometimes talk about me as being a brand, having a strategy and whatever else. I wish. Seriously. I wish I had it together enough to have a strategy. But it's so instinctual. It usually comes down to two things: the person I'm working with - the director is really important to me - and a line in a script.

I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a long-term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.

With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.

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.

Most leaders would agree that they’d be better off having an average strategy with superb execution than a superb strategy with poor execution. Those who execute always have the upper hand.

The best strategy for building a competitive organization is to help individuals become more of who they are.

A strategy that doesn't take into account resources is doomed to failure.

Part of strategy is figuring out what you're good at, figuring out what you're not good at, and then getting yourself in position to succeed by doing mostly what you have a competitive advantage doing.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

It wasn't about wanting to die or having nothing left to live for; it was about letting go. You live your life doing what you're supposed to do, following the rules, following your conscience no matter what your gut tells you - and most times, that's okay. Control is good. It allows you to believe in certainty and absolutes, like lining up the perfect shot. But when you hold on for so long, and hold on so tight, every once in a while you have to close your eyes and jump." Kelley Armstrong - Exit Strategy

I'm flattered by the offers I receive, but there's no real strategy to the way I choose what to do these days. If I'm in a good mood and have the time, I'm more likely to consider it. Often the photographer and team are important factors, too.

We need, men so possessed by the Spirit of God that God can think His thoughts through our minds, that He can plan His will through our actions, that He can direct His strategy of world evangelization through His Church.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

We're doing some very exciting, bold things, pioneering content on mobile and for broadband, ... My vision is to say, as we take the strategy forward, we are doing it to deliver public remit. We're thinking less and less about C4 and more about the brand family.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

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.

Since the events of September 11, weve rightfully changed our military strategy so were now taking the fight to those individuals who aim to do us harm, rather than waiting for another atrocious attack to happen.

What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.

As former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out, if you build a 50-foot wall, you'll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder. You need a strategy that involves layered defense: deployed patrols, sophisticated sensor equipment, and surveillance from the air. That is what has had a positive impact over the last generation.

Our strategy was to give Judge Hoffman a heart attack. We gave the court system a heart attack, which is even better.

To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.

Along with the GI Bill, which educated and housed Eisenhower's fellow veterans, the Interstate System has proved to be by far the most important economic-development strategy of the federal government.

Life is a house with millions of doors. Here is a good strategy of life: Open the doors, open as much as you can, open as much as possible, open the doors!

The gym and the treadmill is a good idea. But the problem is we spend so much effort in marketing messaging, deluding people into thinking if you get on your treadmill or you go to the gym, that's what you need. People who join a gym, the vast majority of them have quit within nine months and almost all of them have quit within two years. So if it's a longevity strategy, does not work.

Announcers don't do enough of the cat-and-mouse strategy and all the work that goes into it. You watch a broadcast and guys get the pitches wrong.

Prayer is the master strategy that Godgives for the defeat and rout of Satan.

Leaders must (1) define the business of the business, (2) create a winning strategy, (3) communicate persuasively, (4) behave with integrity, (5) respect others, and (6) act.

Sometimes I decide not to make something because I am proud and think I am better than that - and then I realise I have to pay the rent and I have to take something which is even worse than all the other stuff they offer you because you were being so proud not to take it! But you adjust and sometimes for one reason or another there is no strategy at the end but there is the ability to do the best that you can with what you have.

The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.

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.

In the 1920s, we thought the problems associated with alcohol could be solved by police and jails. Prohibition taught us we were wrong. The strategy of the present drug war is Prohibition redux.

When you break the heart of the philosopher, you must apply great force and cunning strategy, but when the deed is completed, the heart lies in great stony ruin at your feet. If you succeed in breaking it, the job is done once and for all. It will not be repaired.

A good chaos theory means you have a disciplined strategy behind the scenes of how you're going to roll out policy. And then you do it in a way that inflicts chaos on the press and your opponents.

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.

The great mobility of the King forms one of the chief characteristics of all endgame strategy. In the middlegame the King is a mere 'super', in the endgame on the other hand - on of the 'principals'. We must therefore develop him, bring him nearer to the fighting line.

We've fallen for the devil's lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. However, in reality, sin robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn't make life interesting; it makes life empty. Sin doesn't create adventure; it blunts it. Sin doesn't expand life; it shrinks it. Sin's emptiness inevitably leads to boredom. When there's fulfillment, when there's beauty, when we see God as he truly is-an endless reservoir of fascination-boredom becomes impossible.

I'm always surprised at what I actually end up doing movies because I don't have a strategy or a game plan, especially now that I'm making my own choices where to act. I love strange things; my favorite movies are weird, eclectic, and intriguing.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).

[Steven] Lerner's strategy is, "How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to be rich?" This is what his objective is, and he believes that Wall Street's wealth has been stolen.

During Richard Nixon’s first term, when I served as secretary of defense, we withdrew U.S. forces from Vietnam while building up the South’s ability to defend itself. The result was a success - until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.