Strategy Quotes - Page 4

Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity, foresight, decision-making, and analytics.

In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.

Yesterday’s decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows.

The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

Death is my exit strategy. I'll be doing significant customer service only as long as I live.

Strategic execution always solves problems

Sometimes, if your opponent is determined to win the battle, let him win the wrong battle.

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage...

Change is neither good nor bad. It creates different situations, and that difference is what we have to understand, embrace and explore as an opportunity.

Conceal your dispositions, and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory;  show your dispositions, and your condition will become patent, which leads to defeat.

Without love, we would not comprehend compassion.- Govinda Shauri

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

If you delegate tasks, you create followers, if you delegate authority , you create leaders

Shame often causes me to hide my mistakes from others. But really, when I make a mistake, I should make it loud and clear, so I can see that it didn’t work as a strategy, and be able to make a course correction, either by myself or with the help of others.

The idea that the president has the power to craft a new strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of reality crafted by those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us.

Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.

Learn how to think a few moves ahead at once. In life, if you can anticipate the human mind, you can anticipate all possible futures.

If your brand is a cliché, your brand is losing sales and growth. Why? If your brand is using clichés to promote itself, you’re promoting your “category,” not your unique, individual brand. Painful? Yes. Solvable? Absolutely.

Investor confidence rests on leaders who deliver.

Strategies that did well in competition with other strategies were not, however, those that maximized the returns to agents. Rather, we found a strong inverse relationship between the mean fitness of individuals in populations containing only one strategy, and that strategy's performance in the tournament. This finding illustrates the parasitic effect of strategies that rely heavily on OBSERVE. Strategies using a mixture of social and asocial learning are vulnerable to being outcompeted by those using social learning alone, which may result in a population with lower average returns. These findings are evocative of an established rule in ecology; this specifies that, among competitors for a scarce resource, the dominant competitor will be the species that can persist at the lowest resource level. An equivalent rule may apply when alternative social learning strategies compete: the strategies that eventually dominates will be the one that can persist with the lowest frequency of asocial learning.

Plan strategically and strike it once to win. You can achieve maximum dues with minimum dice if only you are willing to clearly calculate and throw your efforts with optimism!

By confusing strategy with tactics and mixing up “what” and “how”, we may have a hard time staying on point. ”What” we want, on the one hand, and “how” we want to achieve it, on the other, needs a careful reading and a singular approach. (“When the bar is set too high”)

Always solve for the big picture, not for the problem

Who are we, and how do we relate this idea in a way that’s meaningful to our customers and the values they hold dear?In other words, one must define something meaningful. To do that, one must identify to whom this must be meaningful.

The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first.It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life—that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

The speaker instructs his audience to cheer wildly at the word tomorrow -- then forgot. When he used the word building toward the climax of his presentation, he was so started he fell off the stage.

Study the past if you would define the future.

Strategists seek to increase available options by manipulating structure and context, and in this way dictate the terms of conflict. One of the most captivating discussions of manipulating rules and boundaries to further the end of politics is in William Riker’s thought-provoking conception of heresthetics. Riker produces more than a dozen examples of a master strategist’s manipulation of perceptions, agendas, rules, and procedures to assure the strategist’s desired results would ensue. The strategist does not seek a specific outcome or decision; instead the process of decision-making is altered to increase the likelihood that a desired decision will be made. In most cases, the strategist provides additional choices for the opponent, inducing the other side to make a decision that was not previously apparent, but now seems necessary. By increasing the choices of others, strategists increase their own power.

Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.

The rising of birds in their flight is the sign of an ambuscade. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden attack is coming.

Great Leadership sometimes requires taking a step backward in order to take a leap forward.

Helping others is an effective way of training oneself.

Intelligent efforts are successful.

Good sales copy creates good sales.

Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

Cole envisioned the next few weeks passing as a sort of painless montage: there'd be music, and different moments of the townspeople hard at work building a defensive wall around the perimeter of the town, and digging holes to serve as traps, and training with the few weapons they had. There'd be a wiping of perspiration and drinks raised to one another and the exchange of friendly smiles between comrades, and perhaps deeper, more meaningful glances between him and MaryAnn.But by midmorning of the first day, Cole had come to the unavoidable conclusion that the remainder of the experience would in fact drag on in exceedingly real time, with lots of heaving and hoing and digging and hauling under the hot sun, full of the kind of intense straining that raised the danger of a really spectacular hernia. And, judging from the few tense conversations he'd had so far, he foresaw a series of increasingly strident arguments with Nora regarding matters strategic. Plus, of course, at the end of all this effort they'd all probably be dead.

A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an organization. Developing a mission statement compels strategists to think about the nature and scope of present operations and to assess the potential attractiveness of future markets and activities. A mission statement broadly charts the future direction of an organization. A mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the organization exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams.

The doctrine of "exit strategy" fundamentally misunderstands the nature of war and, more generally, the nature of historical action. for the knowledge of the end is not given to us at the beginning.

Do not think of defeat if the battle is not won yet

Strategy is methodical, but the one who steers chaos and randomness can steer God.

Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.

The history of the failure of war can almost be summed up in two words: too late.

Consider and then act, don't react. A worthy opponent will calculate his move to entice a response from you. Make your own play.

the worst calamities that befall an army arise from hesitation

Every step in life is merely part of a game. Every piece is necessary, but if you do not know how to control the game, then you become one of the pieces that are meant to be sacrificed.

When you're working, some people relax and wait for the invisible right time, but when they see your fortune, they wake up and strategize an envious attack.

You can either learn to live with your Kryptonite or you can conquer it. Do what others don’t and you will have a distinct strategic advantage.

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.

Your money habits and investment strategy is not all about what you do, but much about who you are. Become the person it takes to do, succeed, and innovate.

Nuclear deterrence will remain a vital aspect of security. or Nuclear deterrence will have a smaller role in future security.Sources are split in their assessment of the importance of nuclear weapons and the validity of traditional nuclear deterrence in the 2001 - 2015 period. On the one hand are those who see nuclear weapons as decreasingly effective tools in deterring war. On the other are those experts who concede that nuclear weapons may have a different role than at the height of the Cold War, but who argue that they remain the ultimate deterrent, with considerable effect on the actions of even rogue states.Many experts who state a moral opposition to nuclear weapons have translated this into forecasts of a globalized world in which nuclear deterrence no longer makes sense. With greater economic interdependence, this argument runs, even the so-called "rogue states" will be reconciled to the international order, renouncing or reducing their overt or covert nuclear arsenals.

Patience and Forgiveness are at the heart of A warrior's success, they help engender necessary intervals of space and time to evaluate difficult encounters.

You cannot intimidate people with real bullets, but you can intimidate them with fake gun.

The more we prepare for war, the more we make it a reality. Yet, it would seem, to prepare for war may also be the best and possibly the only way to avoid it.’ – Govinda Shauri, The Aryavarta Chronicles - Kurukshetra

Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.

Be selective in your battles...

Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day.

You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.

Stay strong. Focus on the ultimate goal.