Richard Rumelt
Richard Rumelt is a legend in the world of strategy. From his early days teaching in Iran at a Harvard-sponsored business school to teaching at Harvard Business School itself to over four decades teaching at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Richard’s impact resonates globally. His strategic insights are sought after by major corporations including Microsoft, Shell, Apple, AT&T, Intel, and Commonwealth Bank and by governmental organizations such as the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
Communication Skills
Organizational politics and conflicting interests are the primary barriers to executing a coherent strategy.
"The problem of strategy inside an organization is diversity of interest and fear of action... action, when you do something in an organization of any size, it involves people changing what they do. It..."
Growth Skills
Network effects create a powerful asymmetry where the size of the user base directly increases product value.
"The power that new business models are exploiting is the power of the user base. What we called years ago, network effects, where the more users you have, the more useful a product is."
Hiring & Teams Skills
Asking about difficult past achievements reveals a candidate's problem-solving ability and persistence.
"I like to ask people about, what have you done that was hard that you're proud of? What have you done that was difficult? And what was it and why was it difficult and how did you get it done?"
Product Management Skills
Strategy is fundamentally a design for problem-solving rather than just a set of high-level goals.
"A strategy is a design for overcoming a high-stakes challenge. It's a mixture of policy and action designed to deal with a challenge."
A valid strategy must contain three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent actions.
"The kernel... if anyone in three is missing, something's wrong. It's not really a strategy, it's something else. There has to be an understanding of the situation. There has to be a guiding policy, ho..."
Effective strategy focuses on addressable challenges rather than abstract missions or visions.
"Don't call it strategy, call it an action agenda. It's huge numbers of people out there willing to sell you advice on mission and your vision and your values... That's not true. Begin to try to identi..."
Strategic power comes from concentrating resources on a few pivotal objectives rather than spreading them thin.
"Focus, it's the fundamental source of power and strategy. Trying to do too many different things is defocusing."
Prioritization should be a balance between what is important (ambition) and what is actually achievable (addressable).
"Which of your ambitions can you begin to make progress towards reaching, and what's holding you back? What are the barriers? What are the problems? So I approach the question of the problem now throug..."
Competitive strategy requires identifying and exploiting an asymmetry—something you have or know that others do not.
"In a competitive situation, the fundamental aspect of power is something that's going to give you some sort of advantage. Usually it's in asymmetry of some kind. If two fighters are equally balanced....."
The foundation of any strategy is a rigorous diagnosis of the current reality and the specific problem to be solved.
"All strategy is problem solving. It's a form of dealing with challenges... you're diagnosing the situation. You're trying to figure out what's going on here. What's the nature of reality that you're d..."
Identifying the 'crux'—the most difficult part of a challenge—is the key to finding a strategic breakthrough.
"The crux in a climb is the hardest part... In business, the crux is the hardest part of the problem. And from the design point of view... there's usually a challenge... by focusing on the difficulty,..."