Execution And Strategy Quotes

Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on. I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise. I have full confidence in myself and my abilities. I can do all things that I commit myself to. No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me. I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily. I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past. I am moving forward daily. Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

With proper strategy, if you enter a war, you can defeat even the biggest army otherwise you can be defeated by even the smallest army.

The success of a strategy largely depends on it's implementation. You can have a good strategy, you can have a winning game plan, but ultimately you and your team have to implement the strategy and execute and put the game plan into action if your business is going to succeed.

Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.

In today's global economy, it's essential that businesses efficiently execute on or plug into logistics.

To be on the same page, we need to be in the same book.

Be creative while inventing ideas, but be disciplined while implementing them.

To pretend to ignore the enemy is the best way to seduce the enemy

articulate and define what has previously remained implicit or unsaid;

Transitioning a business from current state to future state requires clear strategy, adaptability, synergy among all involved and a dedication to execution - among other things.

The hardware of a computer is useless without the right software. Similarly, in an organization the hardware (strategy and structure) is inert without the software (beliefs and behaviors).

In the early stages of a startup, focusing on “execution” will put you out of business. Instead, you need a “learning and discovery” process so you can get the company to the point where you know what to execute.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

While good strategy content is based on a compelling value proposition for buyers with a robust profit proposition for the organization, sustainable strategy execution is based largely on a motivating-people proposition.

(S × E)T = R ([Strategy times Execution] multiplied by Trust equals Results)

One idea alone is a tactic, but if it can be executed a number of different ways, it becomes a great strategy.

The best leaders never stop learning.

life can be organized like a business plan. First you take an inventory of your gifts and passions. Then you set goals and come up with some metrics to organize your progress toward those goals. Then you map out a strategy to achieve your purpose, which will help you distinguish those things that move you toward your goals from those things that seem urgent but are really just distractions. If you define a realistic purpose early on and execute your strategy flexibly, you will wind up leading a purposeful life. You will have achieved self-determination, of the sort captured in the oft-quoted lines from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.

You can learn a lot about business by watching sports. Some of the strategies you see being executed in a sports game can actually be translated into business terms and executed to achieve business success.

So, execution is really the critical part of a successful strategy. Getting it done, getting it done right, getting it done better than the next person is far more important than dreaming up new visions of the future.

Messages are more often “heard” when the communicator is honest, sincere, and succinct. In other words, say what you mean, and mean what you say.

The Six Steps to Success: 1) Define Success 2) Devise a Plan 3) Execute and Overcome Adversity 4) Measure Results with Key Metrics 5) Revise the Plan 6) Work Hard

When there is no coherent strategy, tactics, no matter how flashily executed, become meaningless.

Strategy is, in essence, problem solving, and the best approach depends upon the specific problem at hand. Your environment dictates your approach to strategy.

If you don't know how to execute, every strategy will fail, even the most promising ones. As one of my former bosses observed: “No strategy is better than its execution.

When the business environment is competitive, it's often strategy and execution that makes the difference between winners and losers.

Consider an AI that has hedonism as its final goal, and which would therefore like to tile the universe with “hedonium” (matter organized in a configuration that is optimal for the generation of pleasurable experience). To this end, the AI might produce computronium (matter organized in a configuration that is optimal for computation) and use it to implement digital minds in states of euphoria. In order to maximize efficiency, the AI omits from the implementation any mental faculties that are not essential for the experience of pleasure, and exploits any computational shortcuts that according to its definition of pleasure do not vitiate the generation of pleasure. For instance, the AI might confine its simulation to reward circuitry, eliding faculties such as a memory, sensory perception, executive function, and language; it might simulate minds at a relatively coarse-grained level of functionality, omitting lower-level neuronal processes; it might replace commonly repeated computations with calls to a lookup table; or it might put in place some arrangement whereby multiple minds would share most parts of their underlying computational machinery (their “supervenience bases” in philosophical parlance). Such tricks could greatly increase the quantity of pleasure producible with a given amount of resources.

Commitment, trust, and voluntary cooperation are not merely attitudes or behaviors. They are intangible capital. They allow companies to stand apart in the speed, quality, and consistency of their execution and to implement strategic shifts fast at low cost.

A promising junior executive of IBM was involved in a risky venture for the company and managed to lose over $10 million in the gamble. It was a disaster. When Watson called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, 'I guess you want my resignation?' Watson said, 'You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million educating you!

Most companies that win don't have a unique strategy; quite the opposite, they are doing what everyone else is doing but have figured out how to execute better.

I catch the idea by two senses. But when I read aloud I hear what is read and I see it, and hence two senses get it and I remember it better, if I do not understand it better.

If you can’t describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven’t got a plan.

In an ExO world, purpose trumps strategy and execution overrides planning.

Strategy is Circular it is not linear

One IT executive in an investment banking company claimed that 80 percent of his company’s programming code was dedicated to linking disparate systems, as opposed to creating new capabilities.

In all other construction disciplines, engineers plan a construction strategy that craftmen execute. Engineers don't build bridges; ironworkers do. Only in software is the engineer tasked with actually building the product. Only in software is the "ironworker" tasked with determining how the product will be constructed.

We become blinded by arrogance when we’re utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. We can be consumed by an inferiority complex when we know the right method but feel uncertain about our ability to execute it. What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.

Brainstorm your big idea(s). (2 hrs) Identify your product, customer, competition, and sales/marketing strategy. (2 hrs) Identify your plan for operations, management, capitalization, and finances. (4 hrs) Create a life plan. (4 hrs) Validate your business idea. (8 hrs) Type up your finished business plan. (4 hrs) Execute and follow through on your plan.

Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both.” I submit that while high trust won’t necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.

Frederick consistently used his central position to concentrate against one fraction of the enemy, and he always employed tactics of indirect approach. Thereby he gained many victories. But his tactical indirect approach was geometrical rather than psychological-unprepared by the subtler forms of surprise favoured by Scipio-and for all their executive skill, these manoeuvres were narrow. The opponent might be unable to meet the following blow, owing to the inflexibility of his mind or his formations, but the blow itself did not fall unexpectedly.

A Strategy, no matter how beautifully crafted, has to be executed by and with the people. Therefore, Invest in the people. Communicate the vision and strategy to them. Give them the opportunity to demonstrate how their day-to-day activities contribute to the organisation's strategy

Executives are paralyzed by the muddle. Few employees deep down in the company even know what the strategy is. And a closer look reveals that most plans don’t contain a strategy at all but rather a smorgasbord of tactics that individually make sense but collectively don’t add up to a unified, clear direction that sets a company apart—let alone makes the competition irrelevant. Does this sound like the strategic plans in your company?

Automation promises to execute certain tasks with superhuman speed and precision. But its brittle limitations reveal themselves when the unexpected arises. Studies consistently show that, as overseers, humans make for fickle partners to algorithms. Charged with monitoring for rare failures, boredom and passivity render human supervision unreliable.

Strategy is important. Execution is imperative. However, the most overlooked aspect in team sports, and what most coaches and leaders fail to grasp, is the fact that it is your culture that will determine whether your strategy works and is sustainable. It is the culture you create that is going to determine whether your players perform and execute.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself . . . you shall no more be able to [reach] him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest. [Italics added]

Any chief executive who hires a consultant to give them strategy should be fired.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent,

I am a leader, therefore I lead; I am an executive, therefore I execute; I am a human being, therefore I care.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas.

In God we trust; all others must bring data. ~ W. Edwards Deming

Execution strategies: do / buy / delegate / forget.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” The

No "offense" should be taken, as "none" has been given.

The parent of every great and lasting decision is a thought. Therefore, contemplate deeply and thoroughly and then execute.

A win is in the past as soon as it has happened, so we need to measure ourselves in terms of our understanding of the process and our execution of the key variables.

The good news is that you can minimize the bias preserved by AI, but this comes as a joint responsibility between leaders, domain experts, and developers.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

To reach your organization’s tipping point and execute blue ocean strategy, you must alert employees to the need for a strategic shift and identify how it can be achieved with limited resources. For a new strategy to become a movement, people must not only recognize what needs to be done, but they must also act on that insight in a sustained and meaningful way. How

He says, "It's just a hat." But it's not just a hat. It makes Jess think of racism and hatred and systemic inequality, and the Ku Klux Klan, and plantation-wedding Pinterest boards, and lynchings, and George Zimmerman, and the Central Park Five, and redlining, and gerrymandering and the Southern strategy, and decades of propaganda and Fox News and conservative radio, and rabid evangelicals, and rape and pillage and plunder and plutocracy and money in politics and the dumbing down of civil discourse and domestic terrorism and white nationalists and school shootings and the growing fear of a nonwhite, non-English-speaking majority and the slow death of the social safety net and conspiracy theory culture and the white working class and social atomism and reality television and fake news and the prison-industrial complex and celebrity culture and the girl in fourth grade who told Jess that since she--Jess--was "naturally unclean" she couldn't come over for birthday cake, and executive compensation, and mediocre white men, and the guy in college who sent around an article about how people who listen to Radiohead are smarter than people who listen to Missy Elliott and when Jess said "That's racist" he said "No,it's not," and of bigotry and small pox blankets and gross guys grabbing your butt on the subway, and slave auctions and Confederate monuments and Jim Crow and fire hoses and separate but equal and racist jokes that aren't funny and internet trolls and incels and golf courses that ban women and voter suppression and police brutality and crony capitalism and corporate corruption and innocent children, so many innocent children, and the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and birthers and flat-earthers and states' rights and disgusting porn and the prosperity gospel and the drunk football fans who made monkey sounds at Jess outside Memorial Stadium, even though it was her thirteenth birthday, and Josh--now it makes her think of Josh.

It is your duty to advance the aims of the organization and also to help those who serve it. If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens you can never regain their respect and esteem

marketing strategy is a clear explanation of how you’re going to get there, not where or what “there” is. An effective marketing strategy is a concise explanation of your stated plan of execution to reach your objectives.

It is easier and far more satisfying to retreat and compose yourself after every score—and execute perfectly choreographed plays—than to swarm about, arms flailing, and contest every inch of the basketball court. Underdog strategies

The moment you understand who you will have to spend the rest of your life with and learn to accept it, you’ll eliminate self-judgment, which will empower you to make more bold moves. It will minimize overthinking and increase execution.

James MacGregor Burns wrote that “the Leader’s fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or conscious of what they feel – to feel their true needs so strongly, to define their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to purposeful action.

What were needed were simple psychological tactics and strategies that worked in the field to calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust, elicit the verbalization of needs, and persuade the other guy of our empathy. We needed something easy to teach, easy to learn, and easy to execute.

The only way you can motivate people is to communicate with them.” Effective communication also shapes values for people by “not only bringing company philosophy to life . . . ,” as Peters and Austin put it, but also “helps newcomers understand how shared values affect individual performance.

Chess is 99 per cent tactics. If you don’t pay attention to the tactics, no strategy you devise will fetch you rewards. Strategy can’t compensate for mistakes in execution. If you persist with neat execution, it will keep you in the game even if you’re not able to follow a broader strategy. Strategy without tactics, though, falls at the first hurdle. For me, strategizing for a game isn’t about putting together a specific manoeuvre of pieces. It’s about thinking what my opponent could be aiming for, knowing what my objectives are and then preparing to get what I want out of the game.

Voluntary cooperation is more than mechanical execution, where people do only what it takes to get by. It involves going beyond the call of duty, wherein individuals exert energy and initiative to the best of their abilities—even subordinating personal self-interest—to execute resulting strategies.3

Trust, honesty, and integrity are exceedingly important qualities because they so strongly affect followers. Most individuals need to trust others, especially their boss. Subordinates must perceive their leader as a consistently fair person if they’re to engage in the kind of innovative risk-taking that brings a company rewards.

principles of masterful planning 1. Be clear on purpose. 2. Start with an accurate assessment of today. 3. Create a shared vision of success. 4. Identify your critical successful factors and barriers. 5. Define the drivers: your strategies and priorities. 6. Monitor and report results. 7. Have rewards and consequences to build accountability.

is managed by a section of the frontal lobe called the prefrontal cortex, or PFC. Just like it sounds, the PFC is the most forward-facing part of the frontal lobe. This is where some of our most human faculties lie: planning, personality, rule learning, and other “executive” functions that permit us to live in a complex, nuanced world pummeling us with stimuli.

The final element is execution. The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough—you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent in a way that is consistent with your intentions. In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy. All of these factors—priorities, balancing plans with opportunities, and allocating your resources—combine to create your strategy.

Any good strategy involves risk. If you think your strategy is foolproof, the fool may well be you. Execution, too, is uncertain — what works in one company with one workforce may have different results elsewhere. Chance often plays a greater role than we think, or than successful managers usually like to admit. The link between inputs and outcomes is tenuous. Bad outcomes don’t always mean that managers made mistakes; and good outcomes don’t always mean they acted brilliantly.

Fortunately, there’s a simple practice that can help you sidestep these inconveniences and make it much easier to regularly enjoy rich phone conversations. I learned it from a technology executive in Silicon Valley who innovated a novel strategy for supporting high-quality interaction with friends and family: he tells them that he’s always available to talk on the phone at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays. There’s no need to schedule a conversation or let him know when you plan to call—just dial him up.

Having outgrown its Manhattan headquarters, most of Bell Labs moved to two hundred rolling acres in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Mervin Kelly and his colleagues wanted their new home to feel like an academic campus, but without the segregation of various disciplines into different buildings. They knew that creativity came through chance encounters. “All buildings have been connected so as to avoid fixed geographical delineation between departments and to encourage free interchange and close contact among them,” an executive wrote.11 The corridors were extremely long, more than the length of two football fields, and designed to promote random meetings among people with different talents and specialties, a strategy that Steve Jobs replicated in designing Apple’s new headquarters seventy years later. Anyone walking around Bell Labs might be bombarded with random ideas, soaking them up like a solar cell. Claude Shannon, the eccentric information theorist, would sometimes ride a unicycle up and down the long red terrazzo corridors while juggling three balls and nodding at colleagues.III It was a wacky metaphor for the balls-in-the-air ferment in the halls.

The key questions answered by tipping point leaders are as follows: What factors or acts exercise a disproportionately positive influence on breaking the status quo? On getting the maximum bang out of each buck of resources? On motivating key players to aggressively move forward with change? And on knocking down political roadblocks that often trip up even the best strategies? By single-mindedly focusing on points of disproportionate influence, tipping point leaders can topple the four hurdles that limit execution of blue ocean strategy. They can do this fast and at low cost. Let

The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.' Subsequent military theory has put the accent on the first clause instead of on the last: in particular, on the words 'one point' instead of on the word 'equilibrium'. The former is but a physical metaphor, whereas the latter expresses the actual psychological result which ensures 'that the rest is nothing'. His own emphasis can be traced in the strategic course of his campaigns. The word 'point' even, has been the source of much confusion, and more controversy. One school has argued that Napoleon meant that the concentrated blow must be aimed at the enemy's strongest point, on the ground that this, and this only, ensures decisive results. For if the enemy's main resistance be broken, its rupture will involve that of any lesser opposition. This argument ignores the factor of cost, and the fact that the victor may be too exhausted to exploit his success-so that even a weaker opponent may acquire a relatively higher resisting power than the original. The other school-better imbued with the idea of economy of force, but only in the limited sense of first costs-has contended that the offensive should be aimed at the enemy's weakest point. But where a point is obviously weak this is usually because it is remote from any vital artery or nerve centre, or because it is deliberately weak to draw the assailant into a trap. Here, again illumination comes from the actual campaign in which Bonaparte put this maxim into execution. It clearly suggests that what he really meant was not 'point', but 'joint'-and that at this stage of his career he was too firmly imbued with the idea of economy of force to waste his limited strength in battering at the enemy's strong point. A joint, however, is both vital and vulnerable. It was at this time too, that Bonaparte used another phrase that has subsequently been quoted to justify the most foolhardy concentrations of effort against the main armed forces of the enemy. 'Austria is our most determined enemy....Austria overthrown, Spain and Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse our attacks but concentrate them.' But the full text of the memorandum containing this phrase shows that he was arguing, not in support of the direct attack upon Austria, but for using the army on the frontier of Piedmont for an indirect approach to Austria.

In the years between 2002 and 2009, there was no centralized national military strategy for Afghanistan—none. A strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. An overarching strategy for any conflict unifies and directs all of its elements to work toward the execution of that strategy, facilitating the accomplishment of the intended goal. In the absence of a strategy, military organizations, especially ones composed of diverse multidimensional and multinational forces such as those in Afghanistan, operate in an unsynchronized fashion, never accomplishing or achieving their intended goals.

There is a real danger in believing it when people use the word “genius”—and it’s even more dangerous when we let hubris tell ourselves we are one. The same goes for any label that comes along with a career: are we suddenly a “film-maker,” “writer,” “investor,” “entrepreneur,” or “executive” because we’ve accomplished one thing? These labels put you at odds not just with reality, but with the real strategy that made you successful in the first place. From that place, we might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story—when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck.

Your rival has ten weak points, whereas you have ten strong ones. Although his army is large, it is not irresistible. “Yuan Shao is too caught up in ceremony and show while you, on the other hand, are more practical. He is often antagonistic and tends to force things, whereas you are more conciliatory and try to guide things to their proper courses, giving you the advantage of popular support. His extravagance hinders his administrative ability while your better efficiency is a great contribution to the government, granting you the edge of a well-structured and stable administration. On the outside he is very kind and giving but on the inside he is grudging and suspicious. You are just the opposite, appearing very exacting but actually very understanding of your followers’ strengths and weaknesses. This grants you the benefit of tolerance. He lacks commitment where you are unfaltering in your decisions, promptly acting on your plans with full faith that they will succeed. This shows an advantage in strategy and decisiveness. He believes a man is only as good as his reputation, which contrasts with you, who looks beyond this to see what kind of person they really are. This demonstrates that you are a better judge of moral character. He only pays attention to those followers close to him, while your vision is all-encompassing. This shows your superior supervision. He is easily misled by poor advice, whereas you maintain sound judgment even if beset by evil council. This is a sign of your independence of thought. He does not always know what is right and wrong but you have an unwavering sense of justice. This shows how you excel in discipline. He has a massive army, but the men are poorly trained and not ready for war. Your army, though much smaller, is far superior and well provisioned, giving you the edge in planning and logistics, allowing you to execute effectively. With your ten superiorities you will have no difficulty in subduing Yuan Shao.

From Bourcet he learnt the principle of calculated dispersion to induce the enemy to disperse their own concentration preparatory to the swift reuniting of his own forces. Also, the value of a 'plan with several branches', and of operating in a line which threatened alternative objectives. Moreover, the very plan which Napoleon executed in his first campaign was based on one that Bourcet had designed half a century earlier. Form Guibert he acquired an idea of the supreme value of mobility and fluidity of force, and of the potentialities inherent in the new distribution of an army in self-contained divisions. Guibert had defined the Napoleonic method when he wrote, a generation earlier: 'The art is to extend forces without exposing them, to embrace the enemy without being disunited, to link up the moves or the attacks to take the enemy in flank without exposing one's own flank.' And Guibert's prescription for the rear attack, as the means of upsetting the enemy's balance, became Napoleon's practice. To the same source can be traced Napoleon's method of concentrating his mobile artillery to shatter, and make a breach at, a key point in the enemy's front. Moreover, it was the practical reforms achieved by Guibert in the French army shortly before the Revolution which fashioned the instrument that Napoleon applied. Above all, it was Guibert's vision of a coming revolution in warfare, carried out by a man who would arise from a revolutionary state, that kindled the youthful Napoleon's imagination and ambition. While Napoleon added little to the ideas he had imbibed, he gave them fulfilment. Without his dynamic application the new mobility might have remained merely a theory. Because his education coincided with his instincts, and because these in turn were given scope by his circumstances, he was able to exploit the full possibilities of the new 'divisional' system. In developing the wider range of strategic combinations thus possible Napoleon made his chief contribution to strategy.

especially in the key task of translating broad strategic concepts into feasible operational orders. Marshall understood that Eisenhower had a talent for implementing strategy. And that job, Marshall believed, was more difficult than designing it. “There’s nothing so profound in the logic of the thing,” he said years later, discussing his own role in winning approval for the Marshall Plan. “But the execution of it, that’s another matter.” In other words, successful generalship involves first figuring out what to do, then getting people to do it. It has one foot in the intellectual realm of critical thinking and the other in the human world of management and leadership. It

To “trip out,” you have to trip up your frontal lobes. Although creativity arises from the frontal lobes, it almost always takes a backseat to the dominant responsibility of those same lobes: the executive and planning function that aims to get through the day as efficiently as possible. So with time, mental habits take hold that reinforce efficient behavior by forming preferential electrical pathways and networks, like freeways directing the major flow between major cities. What psychedelics are thought to do is to disassemble the freeways temporarily, leaving only a dense and evenly distributed network of roads. This dissolution greatly expands the diversity of connections and, as a result, allows unexpected and original thoughts.

received a message on LinkedIn from an IBM executive who wrote, “Pat, I’ve been at IBM for a while and I have been following your content for a few years. I make good money, but I really want to be an entrepreneur. However, I have a wife and three kids and I’m kind of worried about them. What should I do?” We emailed back and forth for a while, and I asked him questions about who he wanted to be. He began to see that intrapreneurship looked like the ideal choice for him. This is when you’re part of a company and create a new business unit, lead a new initiative, or work out incentives that reward you for driving growth and innovation. In some cases, it might just mean being so indispensable that a company has to pay you equity to retain you.

In the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, author Ben Horowitz points out that there is “no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. . . . That’s the hard thing about hard things . . . there is no formula for dealing with them . . . but there are bits of advice and experience that can help with the hard things.” It’s the same with getting scrappy. What makes this kind of effort stand out is the very fact that it can’t be bottled and sold on a shelf. But we can learn from those who have gone before us and benefit from their experience. Below you will find a quick road map of our journey. The content of this book will be divided into three sections exploring attitude, strategy, and execution. Here’s how the chapters will unfold in the pages ahead:

HSBC's executives saw an emerging class of global rich as the bank's path to prosperity. The superwealthy were increasingly stateless. They banked in Geneva. Lived in London and New York. Shopped in Paris and Milan. And they held their assets through offshore companies registered in places like the British Virgin Islands. HSBC executives were reading the telltale signs of a new age of inequality, even if they didn't recognize it as such. Governments were retreating from providing their citizens pension and health organizations, and HSBC strategy report observed. The stateless rich balked at paying taxes in their home countries, to which they felt little allegiance. It made sense to them to base their operations inside tax havens and to bank in Switzerland, where discretion was woven into the country's DNA. These trends represented an opportunity for the wealth management industry.

Instead of focusing on getting more resources, tipping point leaders concentrate on multiplying the value of the resources they have. When it comes to scarce resources, there are three factors of disproportionate influence that executives can leverage to dramatically free resources, on the one hand, and multiply the value of resources, on the other. These are hot spots, cold spots, and horse trading. Hot spots are activities that have low resource input but high potential performance gains. In contrast, cold spots are activities that have high resource input but low performance impact. In every organization, hot spots and cold spots typically abound. Horse trading involves trading your unit’s excess resources in one area for another unit’s excess resources to fill remaining resource gaps. By learning to use their current resources right, companies often find they can tip the resource hurdle outright. What

The governor is like the boy I saw once at the launching of a ship. When everything was ready, they picked out a boy and sent him under the ship to knock away the trigger and let her go. At the critical moment everything depended on the boy. He had to do the job well by a direct, vigorous blow, and then lie flat and keep still while the ship slid over him. The boy did everything right; but he yelled as if he were being murdered, from the time he got under the keel until he got out. I thought the skin was all scraped off his back; but he wasn’t hurt at all. The master of the yard told me that this boy was always chosen for that job, that he did his work well, that he never had been hurt, but that he always squealed in that way. That’s just the way with the governor. Make up your minds that he is not hurt, and that he is doing his work right, and pay no attention to his squealing. He only wants to make you understand how hard his task is, and that he is on hand performing

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself . . . you shall no more be able to [reach] him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest. [Italics

At the reception given by Jinnah on 14 August 1947 when Asghar Khan and Lt Col (later Maj. Gen.) Akbar Khan met Jinnah, Khan told Jinnah that they were disappointed that the higher posts in the armed forces had been given to British officers who still controlled their destiny. According to Asghar Khan, ‘the Quaid who had been listening patiently raised his finger and said, “Never forget that you are the servants of the state. You do not make policy. It is we, the people’s representatives, who decide how the country is to be run. Your job is only to obey the decision of your civilian masters.”’4 Could any politician have the temerity to say this to the army chief today? The answer has to be a resounding no. Hence, democratic governance in Pakistan instead of being a tripod of the executive, legislature and judiciary looks more like a garden umbrella in which the army is the central pole around which the other organs of the state revolve. Consequently, civilian governments in Pakistan have neither defined national security objectives nor developed strategies to implement them.

By that time, Bezos and his executives had devoured and raptly discussed another book that would significantly affect the company’s strategy: The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. Christensen wrote that great companies fail not because they want to avoid disruptive change but because they are reluctant to embrace promising new markets that might undermine their traditional businesses and that do not appear to satisfy their short-term growth requirements. Sears, for example, failed to move from department stores to discount retailing; IBM couldn’t shift from mainframe to minicomputers. The companies that solved the innovator’s dilemma, Christensen wrote, succeeded when they “set up autonomous organizations charged with building new and independent businesses around the disruptive technology.”9 Drawing lessons directly from the book, Bezos unshackled Kessel from Amazon’s traditional media organization. “Your job is to kill your own business,” he told him. “I want you to proceed as if your goal is to put everyone selling physical books out of a job.” Bezos underscored the urgency of the effort. He believed that if Amazon didn’t lead the world into the age of digital reading, then Apple or Google would. When Kessel asked Bezos what his deadline was on developing the company’s first piece of hardware, an electronic reading

The symposium was a closed-doors, synod-style assembly of people who would never have mixed otherwise. My first surprise was to discover that the military people there thought, behaved, and acted like philosophers—far more so than the philosophers we will see splitting hairs in their weekly colloquium in Part Three. They thought out of the box, like traders, except much better and without fear of introspection. An assistant secretary of defence was among us, but had I not known his profession I would have thought he was a practitioner of skeptical empiricism. Even an engineering investigator who had examined the cause of a space shuttle explosion was thoughtful and open-minded. I came out of the meeting realising that only military people deal with randomness with genuine, introspective intellectual honesty—unlike academics and corporate executives using other people's money. This does not show in war movies, where they are usually portrayed as war-hungry autocrats. The people in front of me were not the people who initiate wars. Indeed, for many, the successful defence policy is the one that manages to eliminate potential dangers without war, such as the strategy of bankrupting the Russians through the escalation in defence spending. When I expressed my amazement to Laurence, another finance person who was sitting next to me, he told me that the military collected more genuine intellects and risk thinkers than most if not all other professions. Defence people wanted to understand the epistemology of risk.

In 1998, he helped organize the first “advanced chess” tournament, in which each human player, including Kasparov himself, paired with a computer. Years of pattern study were obviated. The machine partner could handle tactics so the human could focus on strategy. It was like Tiger Woods facing off in a golf video game against the best gamers. His years of repetition would be neutralized, and the contest would shift to one of strategy rather than tactical execution. In chess, it changed the pecking order instantly. “Human creativity was even more paramount under these conditions, not less,” according to Kasparov. Kasparov settled for a 3–3 draw with a player he had trounced four games to zero just a month earlier in a traditional match. “My advantage in calculating tactics had been nullified by the machine.” The primary benefit of years of experience with specialized training was outsourced, and in a contest where humans focused on strategy, he suddenly had peers. A few years later, the first “freestyle chess” tournament was held. Teams could be made up of multiple humans and computers. The lifetime-of-specialized-practice advantage that had been diluted in advanced chess was obliterated in freestyle. A duo of amateur players with three normal computers not only destroyed Hydra, the best chess supercomputer, they also crushed teams of grandmasters using computers. Kasparov concluded that the humans on the winning team were the best at “coaching” multiple computers on what to examine, and then synthesizing that information for an overall strategy. Human/Computer combo teams—known as “centaurs”—were playing the highest level of chess ever seen. If Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov signaled the transfer of chess power from humans to computers, the victory of centaurs over Hydra symbolized something more interesting still: humans empowered to do what they do best without the prerequisite of years of specialized pattern recognition.

Why, he asked, do all of our policing efforts have to be so reactive, so negative, and so after the fact? What if, instead of just focusing on catching criminals—and serving up ever harsher punishments—after they committed the crime, the police devoted significant resources and effort to eliminating criminal behavior before it happens? To quote Tony Blair, what if they could be tough on crime but also tough on the causes of crime?3 Out of these questions came the novel idea for Positive Tickets, a program whereby police, instead of focusing on catching young people perpetrating crimes, would focus on catching youth doing something good—something as simple as throwing litter away in a bin rather than on the ground, wearing a helmet while riding their bike, skateboarding in the designated area, or getting to school on time—and would give them a ticket for positive behavior. The ticket, of course, wouldn’t carry a fine like a parking ticket but instead would be redeemable for some kind of small reward, like free entry to the movies or to an event at a local youth center—wholesome activities that also had the bonus of keeping the young people off the streets and out of trouble. So how well did Richmond’s unconventional effort to reimagine policing work? Amazingly well, as it turned out. It took some time, but they invested in the approach as a long-term strategy, and after a decade the Positive Tickets system had reduced recidivism from 60 percent to 8 percent. You might not think of a police department as a place where you would expect to see Essentialism at work, but in fact Ward’s system of Positive Tickets is a lesson in the practice of effortless execution. The way of the Nonessentialist is to go big on everything: to try to do it all, have it all, fit it all in. The Nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off the ground. The way of the Essentialist is different. Instead of trying to accomplish it all—and all at once—and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

When players study all those patterns, they are mastering tactics. Bigger-picture planning in chess—how to manage the little battles to win the war—is called strategy. As Susan Polgar has written, “you can get a lot further by being very good in tactics”—that is, knowing a lot of patterns—“and have only a basic understanding of strategy.” Thanks to their calculation power, computers are tactically flawless compared to humans. Grandmasters predict the near future, but computers do it better. What if, Kasparov wondered, computer tactical prowess were combined with human big-picture, strategic thinking? In 1998, he helped organize the first “advanced chess” tournament, in which each human player, including Kasparov himself, paired with a computer. Years of pattern study were obviated. The machine partner could handle tactics so the human could focus on strategy. It was like Tiger Woods facing off in a golf video game against the best gamers. His years of repetition would be neutralized, and the contest would shift to one of strategy rather than tactical execution. In chess, it changed the pecking order instantly. “Human creativity was even more paramount under these conditions, not less,” according to Kasparov. Kasparov settled for a 3–3 draw with a player he had trounced four games to zero just a month earlier in a traditional match. “My advantage in calculating tactics had been nullified by the machine.” The primary benefit of years of experience with specialized training was outsourced, and in a contest where humans focused on strategy, he suddenly had peers. A few years later, the first “freestyle chess” tournament was held. Teams could be made up of multiple humans and computers. The lifetime-of-specialized-practice advantage that had been diluted in advanced chess was obliterated in freestyle. A duo of amateur players with three normal computers not only destroyed Hydra, the best chess supercomputer, they also crushed teams of grandmasters using computers. Kasparov concluded that the humans on the winning team were the best at “coaching” multiple computers on what to examine, and then synthesizing that information for an overall strategy. Human/Computer combo teams—known as “centaurs”—were playing the highest level of chess ever seen. If Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov signaled the transfer of chess power from humans to computers, the victory of centaurs over Hydra symbolized something more interesting still: humans empowered to do what they do best without the prerequisite of years of specialized pattern recognition.

During his time working for the head of strategy at the bank in the early 1990s, Musk had been asked to take a look at the company’s third-world debt portfolio. This pool of money went by the depressing name of “less-developed country debt,” and Bank of Nova Scotia had billions of dollars of it. Countries throughout South America and elsewhere had defaulted in the years prior, forcing the bank to write down some of its debt value. Musk’s boss wanted him to dig into the bank’s holdings as a learning experiment and try to determine how much the debt was actually worth. While pursuing this project, Musk stumbled upon what seemed like an obvious business opportunity. The United States had tried to help reduce the debt burden of a number of developing countries through so-called Brady bonds, in which the U.S. government basically backstopped the debt of countries like Brazil and Argentina. Musk noticed an arbitrage play. “I calculated the backstop value, and it was something like fifty cents on the dollar, while the actual debt was trading at twenty-five cents,” Musk said. “This was like the biggest opportunity ever, and nobody seemed to realize it.” Musk tried to remain cool and calm as he rang Goldman Sachs, one of the main traders in this market, and probed around about what he had seen. He inquired as to how much Brazilian debt might be available at the 25-cents price. “The guy said, ‘How much do you want?’ and I came up with some ridiculous number like ten billion dollars,” Musk said. When the trader confirmed that was doable, Musk hung up the phone. “I was thinking that they had to be fucking crazy because you could double your money. Everything was backed by Uncle Sam. It was a no-brainer.” Musk had spent the summer earning about fourteen dollars an hour and getting chewed out for using the executive coffee machine, among other status infractions, and figured his moment to shine and make a big bonus had arrived. He sprinted up to his boss’s office and pitched the opportunity of a lifetime. “You can make billions of dollars for free,” he said. His boss told Musk to write up a report, which soon got passed up to the bank’s CEO, who promptly rejected the proposal, saying the bank had been burned on Brazilian and Argentinian debt before and didn’t want to mess with it again. “I tried to tell them that’s not the point,” Musk said. “The point is that it’s fucking backed by Uncle Sam. It doesn’t matter what the South Americans do. You cannot lose unless you think the U.S. Treasury is going to default. But they still didn’t do it, and I was stunned. Later in life, as I competed against the banks, I would think back to this moment, and it gave me confidence. All the bankers did was copy what everyone else did. If everyone else ran off a bloody cliff, they’d run right off a cliff with them. If there was a giant pile of gold sitting in the middle of the room and nobody was picking it up, they wouldn’t pick it up, either.” In