Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Bad Strategy

The following is excerpted from Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, by Richard P. Rumelt.

To detect bad strategy, look for one of its hallmarks:

Fluff: Gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts. It uses "Sunday" words (inflated and abstruse) and esoteric concepts to creat the illusion of high-level thinking.

Failure to face the challenge: When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.

Mistaking goals for strategy: Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.

Bad strategic objectives: Strategic objectives are "bad" when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.

 

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action

The essentials of marketing are still as relevant as they've ever been. Understand what is valuable and compelling and unique about a product or service and leverage that.  

It is marketers chasing shiny objects, notoriety, and an angle that have mucked up the business.  It isn't about Lovemarks (Kevin Roberts); it isn't about Fascination (Sally Hogshead); it isn't about Firms of Endearment (Sisodia & Wolfe); it isn't about the pontificating of Umair Hague.  And it isn't about Celebrity CMOs like Jeffrey Hayzlett who turned a few years as CMO for Kodak (a company that has since filed for bankruptcy!) and an affinity for Twitter into a prominent role on the speakers' tour.  It is all rubbish.  What we need are marketing practioners capable of connecting the customer experience from one end of the engagement spectrum to the other, and across the purchase funnel into leads and sales.  

As Elvis so smartly sang, "a little less conversation, a little more action."