This is an Aug. 28, 2009, file photo showing New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) in the huddle during the first half of a preseason NFL football game against the Washington Redskins, in Landover, Md. The Boss is back.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Canadian Press
All leaders claim to have a strategy. But Richard Rumelt, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, says often they don't really have a strategy. They have something far more flimsy, which he calls "bad strategy."
"Bad strategy ignores the power of choice and focus, trying instead to accommodate a multitude of conflicting demands and interests. Like a quarterback whose only advice to his teammates is 'let's win,' bad strategy covers up its failure to guide by embracing the language of broad goals, ambition, vision, and values," he writes in McKinsey Quarterly.
Those elements are important, he agrees, but by themselves are not substitutes for the hard work of strategy. Here are the hallmarks of bad strategy:
Not facing the problem: Strategy should help you through a challenge, but if the problem is never defined, you won't get anywhere.
Mistaking a goal for a strategy: You can't simply pick out some target for the troops and call that a strategy. The strategist must create the conditions to make
the push toward those targets effective.
Fuzzy objectives: Vague strategic objectives can flummox an organization. At a planning meeting, everyone suggests things they would like to see accomplished and then, rather than focus on a few important items, the group bundles it up into a package – adding the "long-term" label for heft, but suggesting nothing has to be done immediately.
Fluff: The obvious is restated, with a flourish of buzzwords, all amounting to nothing.
Special to the Globe and Mail