Chris C Fox Consulting

Quotes about Strategy

War is ninety percent information.
Napoleon Bonaparte (French Military and Political Leader)
Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.
Jason Fried (an American entrepreneur, author and CEO of Basecamp)
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.
Michael Porter
Good strategy is unexpected.
Richard Rumelt
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
Wayne Gretzky
Bad strategy flourishes because it floats above analysis, logic, and choice, held aloft by the hot hope that one can avoid dealing with these tricky fundamentals and the difficulties of mastering them. Not miscalculation.
Richard Rumelt, author, in 'Good Strategy / Bad Strategy'
An organisation’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack Welch
What's the use of running if you are not on the right road.
German proverb
There is always a better strategy than the one you have; you just haven't thought of it yet.
Sir Brian Pitman, former CEO of Lloyds TSB, Harvard Business Review, April 2003
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.
John Christopher, in 'When the Tripods Came'
Defeat the enemy's strategy.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
Context is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
We will never try to develop a strategy that wins on price. There is nothing unique about pricing.
Josh S. Weston
There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
Laurence J. Peter
After a business implements a strategy, competitors will react, and the firm’s strategy will need to adapt to meet the new challenges. There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle continues on perpetually. Produce and compete or perish.
Thomas Timings Holme
Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.
John P. Kotter
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
John F. Kennedy
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Yogi Berra
Strategy isn't difficult. It's just a lot of work.
Alexis Mather
Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.
Herodotus, 5th century BC, Greek historian
Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last
A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does.
Russell Ackoff
If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.
Jim Barksdale
Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
Miyamoto Musashi 1584-1645, legendary Japanese swordsman
You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
Alvin Toffler
Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.
President Truman
1500 years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago everybody knew the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago you thought people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.
Agent K, Men in Black
The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.
Napoleon Bonaparte
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hoffmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap
Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice, there is.
Yogi Berra
One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Sir Winston Churchill 1874-1965, English statesman
I can't promise that if things change they will get better. But I can promise that if they don't, they won't.
Chris Fox
What do you want to achieve or avoid? The answers to this question are objectives. How will you go about achieving your desire results? The answer to this you can call strategy.
William E Rothschild
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein
In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are.
Arnold H. Glasgow
So companies have to be very schizophrenic. On one hand, they have to maintain continuity of strategy. But they also have to be good at continuously improving.
Michael Porter
We tend to think that, in a traditional organisation, people are producing results because management wants results, but the essence of a high-quality organisation is people producing results because they want the results. It’s puzzling we find that hard to understand, that if people are really enjoying, they’ll innovate, they’ll take risks, they’ll have trust with one another because they are really committed to what they’re doing and it’s fun.
Peter Senge
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Winston Churchill
The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.
Michael Porter
Strategy 101 is about choices: You can't be all things to all people.
Michael Porter
The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson (American-Canadian writer)
All too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own
Gary Hamel, in 'Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life'
The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.
Richard M. Nixon
The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.
Denis Watley
What gets measured gets managed.
Peter Drucker
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward
The purpose of a system is what it does. There is, after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.
Stafford Beer
The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.
Michael Porter
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
Michael Porter
Initiative prioritisation doesn’t mean distributing all available resources to all known projects.
Volker Voigt
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter Drucker
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Make it work, make it right, make it fast.
Kent Beck
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change.
Michael Porter
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
misattributed to Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist
Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your thinking
unknown

Chris C Fox Consulting Limited is registered in England and Wales as a Private Limited Company: Company Number 6939359. Registered Office: Optionis House, 840 Ibis Court Centre Park Warrington Cheshire WA1 1RL

Cookie Policy | Privacy Policy | Bookshelf