📖 Business
Biz - Four Hallmarks of Bad Strategy
Bad strategy is not the absence of strategy — it's an active practice of avoiding hard choices while creating the illusion of strategic thinking. Rumelt identifies four specific hallmarks that distinguish bad strategy from simply having no strategy. These patterns are pervasive in corporate strategic plans, government policy documents, and organizational roadmaps. Recognizing them is the first step to doing strategy properly, because most people don't realize their "strategy" is actually bad strategy dressed up in professional language.
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How It Works
The four hallmarks of bad strategy:
- Fluff — Superficial restatement of the obvious, inflated with buzzwords and jargon to create the illusion of high-level thinking. "We will leverage our core competencies to provide best-in-class solutions through synergistic innovation." This says nothing. It describes no specific challenge, no specific approach, and no specific action. The test: can you replace the company name and apply this statement to any other company? If yes, it's fluff.
- Failure to face the challenge — The strategy doesn't identify what the actual problem is. Without a diagnosis, there's no strategy — just activity. A hospital system that says "Our strategy is to become the leading provider of integrated health services" without diagnosing why they're struggling has failed to face the challenge. What specifically is broken?
- Mistaking goals for strategy — "Our strategy is to grow revenue 30% and achieve market leadership." That's a set of goals. Where's the plan for how to achieve them? Goals describe a desired destination; strategy describes how you'll get there given the obstacles in your way. The confusion between goals and strategy is the single most common strategic error.
- Bad strategic objectives — Objectives that are either impossible, impractical, or fail to address the critical challenge. Often manifests as a long laundry list of "strategic priorities" — which by definition means nothing is actually prioritized. If you have 20 priorities, you have zero priorities.