Rumelt's kernel of good strategy.
Richard Rumelt's anatomy of good strategy, from Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Every real strategy contains three elements, in order:
- Diagnosis, an honest account of what is actually going on: the critical challenge, named. Most plans skip this and start with goals.
- Guiding policy, the overall approach chosen to overcome the challenge. A direction that rules things out, cousin to a How to Win.
- Coherent action, coordinated steps that reinforce one another in service of the policy. Where Initiatives, Process Commitments and Experiments come from.
The power is in the sequence: action without diagnosis is thrash; diagnosis without action is commentary. The kernel and Martin's Strategy Choice Cascade are complementary structures, one organises the argument, the other the choices, and both fail loudly when fed Bad Strategy.
The diagnosis usually contains the crux, the pivotal obstacle the guiding policy must overcome.
Our synthesis of published thinking, Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy (2011) and The Crux (2022), sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
Reading about method is not the same as running it. We install this system and build the capability that stays.
From diagnosis to executed strategy →