Strategy entails competitive interactions to achieve a contested goal in a specific context with a thinking and purposeful opponent. Too often in government, what passes for a strategy is a PowerPoint slide with a list of things we would like to have happen. Richard Rumelt’s book argues that deep analysis must precede strategy formulation, focusing on understanding all the factors in the landscape that will influence the outcome and the thinking, strengths, and weaknesses of the opponent. A bad strategy can be based on poor assumptions or analysis or require excessive resources. A good strategy is based on finding asymmetries between you and your opponent. Ideally, it involves matching things you do well against things your opponent does poorly and exploiting the mismatch to enable progress toward your goal at an acceptable cost. Also, good strategy requires you to think about how the opponent will respond to your actions and how you can counter those moves. Though it sounds easy, Rumelt’s advice is heeded less than you would think.
Guiding Questions
- How does Rumelt’s “strategy kernel” framework help distinguish between meaningful strategy and corporate rhetoric, and how can it be applied to real-world decision-making?
- How do organizations usually fall into the trap of “bad strategy,” and how can leaders recognize and resist the structural, cultural, and psychological forces that promote it?