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Strategy Quotes: my top 10 Strategy Quote #1. “Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions” —Henry Mintzberg Strategy Quote #2. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” —Michael Porter Strategy Quote #3. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” —Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles 1962 Strategy Quote #4. “Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things” — Miyamoto Musashi, legendary Japanese swordsman Strategy Quote #5. “Corporate Social Responsibility should be more than coloring your annual report green and giving a bag of money to your favorite charity in return for some nice pictures” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Quote #6. “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist Strategy Quote #7. “Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your thinking” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Quote #8. ”You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you cannot go south at the same time.” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Quote #9. ”Like strategy, innovation is a cool word. Put strategy and innovation in a single phrase and a strategy tourist starts drooling.” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Quote #10. “Don’t fool yourself: having a strategy map is not the same as having a strategy” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Execution quotes: my top 10 Strategy Execution Quote #1. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – Sir Winston Churchill Strategy Execution Quote #2. “Execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that companies need to master in order to have competitive advantage. It’s a discipline of its own” —Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy, Execution
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Strategy Execution Quote #3. “From Good to Great is nice, but knowing when great is good enough is even better.” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Execution Quote #4. “Strategy Execution isn’t something other people should worry about while you are doing something far more important” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Execution Quote #5. “If companies would invest as much time in their strategy cascade as they do in their budgeting process, most would perform a lot better” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Execution Quote #5. “In many organizations, budget is king. It’s like the Amazon, the source of life. The strategy process is more like a small stream that meanders slowly through the organization (and if you’re unlucky, the water doesn’t flow at all and starts to smell).” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Execution Quote #6. “Strategy Execution is the responsibility that makes or breaks executives” —Alan Branche and Sam Bodley-Scott, Implementation Strategy Execution Quote #7. “A strategy, even a great one, doesn’t implement itself” Strategy Execution Quote #8 “Persistence is what makes the impossible possible, the possible likely, and the likely definite” —Robert Half Strategy Execution Quote #9. “Just because someone said yes to you doesn’t mean something is going to happen. Most of the yeses we get are noes in disguise” —Jeroen De Flander Strategy Execution Quote #10. “Don’t measure your performance by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished within your capabilities” — Jeroen De Flander
Strategy quotes / strategy execution quotes: the best of the rest 21. “Don’t go for small commitments on big things, but aim for big commitments on small things” —Jeroen De Flander 22. “Dear Executives, execution commitment is not for sale. You have to earn it” —Jeroen De Flander 23. In a crisis: “A previously approved strategy could very well be less realistic today, due to reduced execution capacity in your organization.” —Jeroen De Flander 24. “Dear CEO, when you get tired of telling the strategy storyline, you have reached three percent of your target population” —Jeroen De Flander 25. “Most of us know the marketing concept of good communication. To make a message stick in the head of a future consumer, you need to deliver the message seven times using
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seven different channels. Why do executives think that to make a strategy stick, a boring speech delivered once will be enough?” —Jeroen De Flander 26. “In a 4×100-metre relay race, one runner starts before the other, but in the end it’s the sum of the four runners that determines performance” —Jeroen De Flander 27.“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” — Peter Drucker 28. “What’s the use of measuring speed if you don’t go in the right direction” —Jeroen De Flander 29. “A Balanced Scorecard helps turn parrots – people who just repeat what they have heard – into ambassadors – people who understand the what and why and can reason decisions with others” —Jeroen De Flander 30. “If you have too many rear view mirrors , it will be very difficult to see the road ahead” —Jeroen De Flander 31. “Budgets are like oil tankers – they need time to change course. You don’t want to be left standing on the deck of your oil tanker, watching all the opportunities pass you by unable to stop and turn to chase after them.” 32. “Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment” —Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last 33. “After a business implements a strategy, competitors will react, and the firm’s strategy will need to adapt to meet the new challenges. There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle continues on perpetually. Produce and compete or perish” —Thomas Timings Holme 34. “Body language can’t save you when someone is reading your strategy document” — Jeroen De Flander 35. “When building a new strategy, don’t ever let people seduce you with the line, ‘But that’s always been budgeted for’.” —Jeroen De Flander 36. “The best time to make up your mind about people is never” —Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story 37. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction” —Albert Einstein 38. “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” —Hans Hoffmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap 39. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” —Leonardo Da Vinci
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40. “You can have anything you want – you just can’t have everything you want” — Anonymous 41. “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” — Peter Drucker 42. “Initiative prioritization doesn’t mean distributing all available resources to all known projects” —Volker Voigt 43. “Strategy Execution is all about realizing the full potential of your strategy – and not limiting yourself to only 50, 60 or 70 percent” —Jeroen De Flander 44. “I have never seen a successful project run by a bad project manager” 45. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage” —Jack Welch 46. “Developing people in a classroom is a cost. It becomes an investment when they start applying what they learnt on-the-job. It only becomes a success the moment it has a positive impact on (performance) what the job actually needs to achieve” —Jeroen De Flander 47. “In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are” — Arnold H. Glasgow 48. “The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them” —Denis Watley 49. “No goal commitment equals no performance, whatever else you try” —Jeroen De Flander 50. “We tend to think that, in a traditional organisation, people are producing results because management wants results, but the essence of a high-quality organisation is people producing results because they want the results. It’s puzzling we find that hard to understand, that if people are really enjoying, they’ll innovate, they’ll take risks, they’ll have trust with one another because they are really committed to what they’re doing and it’s fun” —Peter Senge 51. “Real commitment means doing everything in your power to get things done.” —Jeroen De Flander 52. “Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a ‘nervous system’, to coordinate its actions” —Bill Gates, co-founder Microsoft 53. “The result of bad communication is a disconnection between strategy and execution” —Chuck Martin, former Vice President IBM Jeroen De Flander – strategy quotes update PDF
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54. “Look beyond the send button and shift your focus to the receiving end” Do you have strategy quotes of execution quotes that you like to see on the list? Drop me a line.
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About the author: Jeroen De Flander is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on strategy execution and a highly regarded keynote speaker. He has shared the stage with prominent strategists like Michael Porter and reached out to 21,000+ leaders in 30+ countries. His first book Strategy Execution Heroes reached the Amazon bestseller list in 5 countries and was nominated for Management Book of the Year 2012 in the Netherlands. His new book is called The Execution Shortcut.
“De Flander’s latest book charts a strategy for taking any idea off the drawing board and into real life. A great help to anyone looking to bring a good idea into the real world.” Kirkus Reviews "De Flander has added another chapter to the emerging science of strategy execution." Prof. Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School & Dr David Norton "This book explains in an engaging way how Just Do It's don’t come automatically. It only happens when the mind is triggered, the heart inspired, and willpower strengthened." Bert Stevens, Vice President Europe Operations, Nike
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