Richard Rumelt: evaluation

Transcript context

…Wow, how cool. Yeah. There's 17 different intelligence agencies. And the strategy basically that these people had written said the 17 agencies should work together more effectively. Now, you don't have to be a Russian spy to see that what they're really saying is these guys aren't working together effectively and it's a problem. But they didn't say that. They said the strategy is they're going to work together more effectively. Just like the RV always comes out with our strategy is join us, meaning we're having trouble with coordinating. But then there's nothing there about that other than this is what should happen, there should be more effective coordination. And oh, we'll have an office of coordination, put a person in charge of coordination. But there's no sensible... why is it hard to coordinate? What are the barriers to this? This has been going on for 34 years now. What's holding it back? What is a problem we have to solve? It's not there. So I was hired to do a foundry for a company and they said, "Well, our diagnosis is not growing fast enough." Okay, let's get into that because that's not a diagnosis, that's a statement. It's a statement of value, you would like to grow faster than you are. I'd like to be taller than I am. I'd like to have more hair. You want to grow faster. Okay, so what's holding you back? And from [inaudible 00:20:19]. But saying, okay, we're going to grow, that's not a strategy. Bad strategy also is fluff. People will use fancy words to describe their situation. Since I wrote that, the term word salad has become common. And there's a lot of word salad writing that people try to use to describe their situation. It sounds more abstract perhaps more abstract. Therefore, it's more strategic, incoherent stuff where we're going to do A, and we're going to B and those two things obviously fight one another. All those things are part of bad strategy. Bad strategy is a document or a set of intentions or a set of verbalizations where it's not a strategy. There's no diagnosis. Of course, I don't doubt that. Started out saying where United States is falling behind in education. And he's looking at the piece of the PISA test scores of 15 year olds around the world. And it's true, the United States is down, number of 30 countries in terms of the scores of our 15-year-old, in math and in general knowledge. Okay, correct statement, we're falling behind. A real diagnosis would say, because. We jumped immediately to therefore, we're going to have more people go to college than any other country. Well, having more people go to college doesn't solve the problem of 15 year olds not being able to do elementary math. Hopefully it doesn't screw up colleges everywhere. So that kind of gap, it's there, where you don't do the diagnosis. Why do we have this? We argue over diagnosis as part of politics and part of organizational politics. That's what we do, and that's important. To do a strategy, you have to resolve the argument. osis. Why do we have this? We argue over diagnosis as part of politics and part of organizational politics. That's what we do, and that's important. To do a strategy, you have to resolve the argument. Why do we have a homeless explosion in Portland or Seattle or Los Angeles? And people argue about that. Some people say, "Oh, strokes." Some people say, "Oh no, housing is too expensive." There are different diagnosis. But to deal with the issue, you have to decide on the diagnosis. The politicians right now sort of decided for a few years that the problem is housing's too expensive, we're going to build housing at $700,000 a unit and give it to the all people. Okay. If you build it, they will come. But then the next problem is, well, can't seem to build a housing. And so again, you need a new diagnosis. Why can't you build a housing? You're a rich, powerful country. Why can't you build some housing? So diagnosis is critical to understanding it. And in public policy, we argue over the diagnosis. And in organizations we argue. And unless you resolve it, you can't act. So lacking diagnosis is one of the key reasons for bad strategy. The other, the fluff and the incoherent actions are fun to describe, but they're less common. The second major source of bad strategy is mistaking goals for strategy, saying these goals are our strategy. And that leaves out so many of the important aspects.…

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