Good Strategy / Bad Strategy

Richard Rumelt, professor at UCLA, defines what separates a real strategy from a wish list with a fancy name. Through examples ranging from Steve Jobs' turnaround of Apple to the Normandy invasion, he shows that good strategy always rests on three parts — diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action — and that their absence is exactly what characterizes "bad strategy": fluff, failure to face the actual challenge, and goals mistaken for strategy.