Strategy Quotes - Page 2

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

Change is difficult, since it challenges the status quo.

Maxim 20: If you’re not willing to shell your own position, you’re not willing to win.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

Social media isn’t a brand strategy. Social media is a channel. While it’s important for a brand to develop something to say, it’s more important to create something that will be heard.

Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.

Though Moltke was working with subordinates who were totally lacking in comprehension for whatever strategic plans he may have entertained and who on occasion abused the independence granted them, those plans were sufficiently flexible to accommodate errors; that is, a large safety margin was left to ensure that mistakes would not develop into catastrophes.

Patience and Forgiveness are at the heart of A warrior's success, they help engender necessary intervals of space and time to evaluate difficult encounters.

But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already a loss.

So it comes down to scarcity, one product or service having qualities you won’t find everywhere or ideally, anywhere. It’s the job of every brand to seek that out as their standard, their stamp.

The hound and hare were both so wearied that the peasant got them all.

Great results, can be achieved with small forces.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

... throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless theapproach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent's unreadyness to meet it.The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological.

Cole envisioned the next few weeks passing as a sort of painless montage: there'd be music, and different moments of the townspeople hard at work building a defensive wall around the perimeter of the town, and digging holes to serve as traps, and training with the few weapons they had. There'd be a wiping of perspiration and drinks raised to one another and the exchange of friendly smiles between comrades, and perhaps deeper, more meaningful glances between him and MaryAnn.But by midmorning of the first day, Cole had come to the unavoidable conclusion that the remainder of the experience would in fact drag on in exceedingly real time, with lots of heaving and hoing and digging and hauling under the hot sun, full of the kind of intense straining that raised the danger of a really spectacular hernia. And, judging from the few tense conversations he'd had so far, he foresaw a series of increasingly strident arguments with Nora regarding matters strategic. Plus, of course, at the end of all this effort they'd all probably be dead.

Every great brand goes back to a courageous individual who dared to say 'NO' to the status quo.

... I believe that he will prosper most whose mode of acting best adapts itself to the character of the times; and conversely that he will be unprosperous, with whose mode of acting the times do not accord.

Each minute wasted with a shark is a missed opportunity to enjoy being with a Dolphin

Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity, foresight, decision-making, and analytics.

Having a me-too brand is a death sentence.

Here is a very simple strategy of life: When the train arrives at the station, be at the station!

The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug has to be.

Experience is costly knowledge.

Always solve for the big picture, not for the problem

mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy

War is ruthless murder, yet it is justifiable only when a country is defending its turf from outside intruders. To convince soldiers to attack another country for no other reason than greed or strategic positioning requires creativity. And most of the time, soldiers do not really know whether they are on the side of the attackers or the defenders. This is where people misunderstand war. When you attack another country for its resources, you are the pirate. But when you protect your country from the pirates, you are the hero.

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Kestrel's cruel calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: the fact that she could make decisions like this, that she did have a mind for strategy, that people could be so easily become pieces in a game she was determined to win...

The future is not about a single mind that sees or predicts - it is about the many.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

Most businesses would profit greatly from just applying Change Management 101 well.

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.

Whether in an advantageous position or a disadvantageous one, the opposite state should be always present to your mind.

If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them.

If those who are sent to draw water begin by drinking themselves, the army is suffering from thirst. [One may know the condition of a whole army from the behavior of a single man.]

Every advantage is temporary.

Competition exists to choose who gets the prize when the prize can’t be shared.

If you're going down the wrong path, speeding up isn't going to help.

The CIO is a serious partner in the inner circle to creating value-added strategies and enabling deeper insights into the opportunities IT can do.

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

Strategy can turn a losing battle into a winning battle.

Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities. And it must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And, therefore, he must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if constrained.

No,” Gideon says. “No guns. The most dangerous weapon you have is your brain. Give someone a gun and they tend to quit using it.

Criticizing is easy, performing is difficult.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.

To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.

Pool is a game of thinking, strategy and accuracy - just like in business.

Early is a priceless timepiece owned by the successful.

You’re a clever strategist, but not all battles require tricks. Sometimes the simplest way to kill something is to swim up to it and bite it in half.

The bureaucrat is a man who administers things and people, and who relates himself to people as to things.

Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots.

… the greatest mystery, the greatest wonder of creation is that we are capable of both relentless reason and boundless love ... It is not about what we are, but what we can become.– Govinda Shauri

I find that the harder I work , the more luck I seem to have.

If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.

Entrepreneurs utilize even a negative change positively.

There are not more than five primary colors  (blue, yellow,  red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.