Everything You Need to Know About Strategy – A Baker’s Dozen Eternal Verities: Introduction

Recap: All You Need to Know About Strategy

1. Do you have awesome Talent … everywhere? (“We are the Yankees of home improvement here in Omaha.”) Do you push that Talent to pursue Audacious Quests?
2. Is your Talent Pool loaded with wonderfully peculiar people whom others would call “problems”? And what about your Extended Community of customers, vendors, et al.?
3. Is your Board of Directors as cool as your product offerings … and does it have 50 percent (or at least one-third) Women Members?
4. Long-term, it’s a “Top-line World”: Is creating a “culture” that cherishes above all things Innovation and Entrepreneurship your primary aim? Remember: Innovation … not Imitation!
5. Are the Ultimate Rewards heaped upon those who exhibit an unswerving “Bias for Action,” to quote the co-authors of In Search of Excellence? Are your OODA loops shorter than the next guy’s?
6. Do you routinely use hot, aspirational words-terms like “Excellence” and BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal, per Jim Collins) and “Let’s make a dent in the Universe” (the Word according to Steve Jobs)? Is “Reward excellent failures, punish mediocre successes” your de facto or de jure motto?
7. Do you subscribe to Jerry Garcia’s dictum:“We do not merely want to be the best of the best, we want to be the only ones who do what we do”?
8. Do you elaborate on and enhance Jerry G’s dictum by adding,“We subscribe to ‘Best Sourcing’— and only want to associate with the ‘best of the best’.”
9. Do you embrace the new technologies with child-like enthusiasm and a revolutionary’s zeal?
10. Doyou“serve”and“satisfy”customers…or“goberserk”attemptingtoprovideeverycustomerwith an “awesome experience” that does nothing less than transform the way she or he sees the world?
11. Do you understand … to your very marrow … that the two biggest under-served markets are Women and Boomers-Geezers? And that to “take advantage” of these two Monster “Trends” (FACTS OF LIFE) requires fundamental realignment of the enterprise?
12. Are your leaders accessible? Do they wear their passion on their sleeves? Does integrity ooze out of every pore of the enterprise? Is “We care” your implicit motto?
13. Do you understand business mantra #1 of the ’00s: DON’T TRY TO COMPETE WITH WAL*MART ON PRICE OR CHINA ON COST? (And if you get this last idea, then see the 12 above!)