Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

Reading Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is like that ‘aha’ moment when someone else puts into clear terms something you’ve been thinking in fuzzy terms for a long time.

The core thesis is that most strategy is no such thing. People aren’t willing to make the hard choices involved in picking one thing to do over others, so when you read most strategy documents, it comes off rather vague.

It’s no coincidence that the book is clear and concise. The examples are immediately understandable; the connection between concision and strategic clarity is very self-evident. It’s not arguing for endless precision either; the good strategist might well avoid numbers, preferring a clearly articulated set of actions to diagnose a well understood situation, over endless detail.

At the same time I read this, someone told me about Amazon’s habit of kicking off a new project with a 4 page pitch. Bezos’ claim is that a document is better as a pitch; a slide deck allows the thoughts to remain a little fuzzy, while words force precision on the instigator of the action.

I’m not sure I totally agree with that; there are many uses for visual means in communication — some concepts are best communicated spatially. But I love the idea of the constraint, as I frequently practise the hard work of boiling something down to precise words.