A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.
Every company has to identify what I call its strategic resources, and make sure that it grabs as much of its strategic resources as possible.
The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish.
When investors, particularly investment bankers, talk about splitting up companies, there's a lot of discussion about multiple expansion, and the reality is multiple expansion is an outcome, not a strategy.
The thing is, continuity of strategic direction and continuous improvement in how you do things are absolutely consistent with each other. In fact, they're mutually reinforcing.
It's important to have a really clear strategy so when you are in business, you only have to make micro-strategy changes.
There's a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness.
You build your own strategy. You don't define it by what another competitor is doing.
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.