Goals for Strategy

Sometimes we mistake goals for strategy. Three ideas from Richard Rumelt¹ about this:

• “If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don’t have a strategy. Instead, you have either a stretch goal, a budget, or a list of things you wish would happen.”

• “Use the word goals to express overall values and desires, and use the word objective to denote specific operational targets. It is strategy that transforms goals into a coherent set of actionable objectives.”

• “Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.”