Quotes about Strategy

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.

For the accomplished warrior, belief is not a form of strategy, nor is it borrowing the stories of previous warriors from books and stories. Trying to theorize and borrow ideas doesn’t seem to help. The notion of belief, or view, here is based on complete simplicity. Your view is not affected by liberalism or conservatism, nihilism or eternalism, at all. Your view is straightforward and simple; it is almost a cosmic domestic view. It is the notion of complete simplicity. When you meet a person, you don’t have to develop a whole style of how to view that person according to either the historic or present situation, the sociological context, his religious connections, or whatever it may be. You don’t have to go through all that. You can have a direct relationship, which is very simple, direct, and straightforward—extremely straightforward.

If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.

The antidote to fear? Pull people out of their panic and self-protective impulses
by first acknowledging the difficulties, then raising their eyes and hearts to a
possibility of success. At that point you can take advantage of their newly available
and hopeful energy to make that possibility a reality.

What is strategy? It’s simple: strategy is what’s strategic – what is in your long-run best interest, factoring in everyone else’s long-run best interest.

A strategy of rapid global growth requires a different culture than one of focused innovation, and there are a number of levers (including succession) that can be pulled to align the culture to the needs of the future strategy. Unfortunately, most organizations see their culture as an impediment to the implementation of their strategy; very few see it as a competitive advantage.

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists. 

Do not analyze things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, "Ready, fire, aim." Do it first , then make adjustments. The answer lies in action--not in words.

No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.