Good Strategy Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and
provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real
world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy
is a specific and coherent response to-and approach for-overcoming the obstacles to progress. A
good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect.
Yet Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate
Mom-and-apple-pie values fluffy packages of buzzwords motivational slogans and financial
goals with strategy. In Good Strategy Bad Strategy he debunks these elements of bad strategy
and awakens an understanding of the power of a good strategy. He introduces nine sources of
power-ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth-that are eye-opening yet
pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning and uses fascinating examples
from business nonprofit and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to
life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors from the two Iraq wars to
Afghanistan from a small local market to Wal-Mart from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics from the
Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District from Cisco Systems to Paccar and from
Global Crossing to the 2007-08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and
integration of economics finance technology history and the brilliance and foibles of the
human character Good Strategy Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt's decades of digging beyond the
superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.
