🎯 Fifteen years since Rumelt wrote about bad strategy in McKinsey…

🎯 Fifteen years since Rumelt wrote about bad strategy in McKinsey Quarterly, and I still recognise half the "strategy" slides I see in it.

His four signs: not facing the real challenge, mistaking goals for strategy, bad strategic objectives, and fluff.

Number two is the common one. "Grow 20% next year" is not a strategy. Without looking at what is in the way, he says, you only have "a stretch goal or a budget or a list of things you wish would happen."

His fix is short. Diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions.

McKinsey still has the whole piece up https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-perils-of-bad-strategy and the Nelson at Trafalgar story at the start is worth it alone.