Corporate Strategy Made Simple
I'm generally not crazy about academics and MBA programs, but in this short video clip, Professor Richard Rumelt of the Anderson School of Management at UCLA makes some valid points.
I probably feel that way because they're pretty much the same points that I made in this morning's post "A VP of Sales ($b?) Calls My Bluff."
- Corporate strategy is basically simple. It simply consists of focusing on one thing and doing it well.
- Tactical execution is difficult. Most of the time it gets screwed up by corporate politics.
- Corporate executives often take years to figure out that their market has changed.
The problem in most companies lies in the inability to choose one of those two strategies and stick with it. Instead, what you get is executives trying to change strategies in order to advance their careers or in order to weaken the power of their enemies.
That's why I'm opposed to having lots of strategy discussions, which tend to create churn in the tactical execution as people try to adapt to the strategy du-jour. And it's also why I think that people who call themselves "strategists" are generally useless, at best.
In the post "Brand Strategy = Marketing Boondoggle" I take on the worst culprit when it comes to strategy-mania -- branding.