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I am about 90% convinced that Good Strategy Bad Strategy is a bad book. Two questions: 1. What is something actionable you took away from the book? 2. In a year’s time, circle back and ask: what changes did I make as a result of that takeaway?

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 20

In most cases, people give me a semi-profound answer to the first question. Usually it’s the ‘kernel of good strategy’ or ‘what bad strategy looks like’ The answer to the second question is almost invariably ‘nothing.’

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 20

Contrast this to 7 Powers, where the takeaway (for those who understand or have experienced competitive arbitrage): - there are really only 7 types of economic moats, or ‘Powers’ - there are at most 3 Powers you may build at a given stage - Power comes from discovery+execution

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 20

I haven’t fully figured out why the book is so useless. I think it’s some combination of: - Rumelt has good points to make about what good strategy looks like. But so what? - His proposed method to get to one doesn’t tackle the hardest bit, which is context-dependent diagnosis

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 20

- The framework doesn’t carve the problem at the joints, reducing it to the core question you must answer for strategy to work (beat the competition) - As a result it feels actionable but it isn’t, really.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 20

The reason I say ‘90% convinced’ is because of the “here is what bad strategy looks like” piece — which is genuinely useful as a pattern matching example. But that’s the limit, I think: - sufficiently thoughtful execs should know this - what to do instead? Book has 0 clue.

Replying to

Yes that was the bit I found useful, as very few senior leadership teams know this or if they do know it they don’t want conflict amongst themselves so a big list of vague objectives appears very quickly. Context is invariably absent or minimized. Suggestion for a better guide?

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Replying to

@ryandal

Hnm, what’s the context for which you’d like an alternative? I was going to recommend 7 Powers, but it really only helps wrt resisting competitive arbitrage (the central problem in business).

2:27 AM · Aug 20, 2022Twitter Web App

Replying to

I think anything that directly addresses where edu strategic planning tends to be weakest that covers some of the following: identifying and countering opposition, not confusing noise and signal in market analysis, importance of (healthy) internal conflict in finalizing plans etc

Replying to

HMM. I don’t have any good recommendations for this, but I’ll keep an eye out. To flip this a bit, could you recommend me books you’ve found useful for your strategic context? I’d be curious to see what else is out there in your domain.

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