Rumelt: A Strategy That Wants Everything Is a Bad Strategy

From the work of UCLA management professor Richard P. Rumelt. Robin: “If you cannot make clear trade-offs, you can only produce bad strategy.” A strategy that wants everything is a bad strategy. Much bad strategy comes from the reluctance to give things up. Good strategy requires choosing among alternatives: selecting some goals and abandoning others. But whenever an abandoned goal affects someone’s interests, opposition is inevitable, particularly in a large organization. Organizations often respond with a mishmash strategy that pleases every stakeholder. It requires no serious analysis, rigorous logic, or, most importantly, sacrifice. No one is offended; everything appears harmonious, comprehensive, and satisfactory. But a strategy that wants everything is destined to be bad. --- In the 1991 Gulf War, US forces launched Operation Desert Storm. A seemingly simple strategy—feint at the front and outflank from the side—deceived Saddam Hussein and routed 540,000 Iraqi troops, while US casualties on the first day numbered only eight. Many think anyone could devise such a simple strategy. Its difficulty was intense focus. Implementing it meant abandoning many other objectives: keeping 8,000 elite Marines waiting on warships, using elite airborne troops to divert Iraqi attention, and rejecting an air-force proposal to attack Baghdad simultaneously. In short, the strategy set aside numerous resources and objectives and suppressed proposals inconsistent with the main plan. That sacrifice and focus made it powerful. Concentrate key resources on a few right targets and you can often win unexpected victories. Pursue multiple conflicting goals at once, and you become reactive and ultimately achieve none.