Strategy Quotes - Page 8

If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay, is desperate ground.

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

A good strategy tells you not only what specifically needs to accomplish, but WHY.

We each sell alittle piece of happiness. You are elevating someone's spirit in some way, and to do that you have to understand the source of their angst and then you have to frame your product as a solution.

Criticizing is easy, performing is difficult.

No army is comprised of all the same kinds of units or types of troops. There is power in diversity. If you always see only one choice, or use only one option, you will surely lose more than you win.

I am always trying to figure God out so that I can figure Him in. But after a while I figure that I should just let God be God, and figure that He’ll figure it all out anyway.

I was not so insane as to attempt to bend events to conform to my policies. On the contrary, I bent my policies to accord with the unforeseen shape of the events.

Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them.

Marketing should never be just a blunt instrument.

A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.

In order to deliver people we need to have a strategy, to have a plan of deliverance

The typical industry approach is [retailers] to treat vendors like the enemy... If vendors can't make a profit then they don't have money to invest in research and development, which in turn means that the products they bring to the market will be less inspiring to customers, which in turn detriments the retailer's business because customers aren't inspired to buy. People want to cut costs and negotiate aggressively because there's a limited amount of profit to be shared by both sides. As a result of this "death spiral", most retailers fail.

Maxim 28: If the price of collateral damage is high enough, you might be able to get paid for bringing ammunition home with you.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

If you're going down the wrong path, speeding up isn't going to help.

Annual planning cycles doom you to short term fixes for long term problems

The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulation. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious. P. 26

If every day at work feels like a Friday, then you are doing what you were meant to do.

When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is COLLAPSE.

Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.

Keeping it simple, you have a vision of what you are to become and a strategy for making that happen.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Just introduce a woman, conspiracies succeed; Of soldiers, or their weapons, there really is no need.

Strategy can turn a losing battle into a winning battle.

Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.

... throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless theapproach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent's unreadyness to meet it.The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological.

Make sure a conflict exists before working to resolve it.

Perseverance guarantees success.

Businesses need to be more alert. Sometimes the problem is not the customer service, it is the product.

Strategy can win over tricky situations.

..the best strategy for giving is a two-fold approach: a basic plan combined with a willingness to consider spontaneous giving when unique opportunities arise.

Knowing the enemy enables you to take the offensive, knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive.

You may create a inspirational & visually resplendent strategy map but without accountability its value is specious

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

Secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin is accused of treason by war enthusiasts merely for suggesting budget adjustments to pay for war measures.

The concern of a team member is also the concern of the team.

Agility within and of itself is a strategy.

War is more than battles, and battles are more than violence.

In sales, every prospect is a potential customer.

Kill them. Kill them all. Remind the world what it means to be Arya. Remind the world what it is to walk with the gods.– Syoddhan Kauravyaw

His level of experience is nearly transcendent.

Unwise application of knowledge is dangerous.

It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern by the arts of peace.

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.Excerpt From: Sunzi. “The Art of War.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

This is stupid.""Look. You think how stupid people are most of the time. Old men drink. Women at a village fair. Boys throwing stones at birds. Life. The foolishness and the vanity, the selfishness and the waste. The pettiness, the silliness. You think in war it must be different. Must be better. With death around the corner, men united against hardship, the cunning of the enemy, people must think harder, faster, be...better. Be heroic.Only it's just the same. In fact do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it's worse. There aren't many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they'll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There's no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.

Work always makes a difference.

Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.

Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier.

If all we’re prepared for is unconventional warfare, suddenly a massed conventional attack becomes an asymmetric advantage.

Someone once told me that, when your operations are not good, you should not talk strategy," says Iyer. "Fair enough. But the opposite is also true. If operations are good, then you must talk strategy.

Synergy without strategy results to waste of energy.

In order to sell, salespersons have to correctly evaluate and cater to customer choices.

Some team members act as adhesives to unite the team.

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

You need a strategy to assume leadership, but only the character can sustain leaders as who they really are.

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.