Harvard Business Review Leadership & Strategy Boxed Set (5 Books)

Chapter Eight

Shorten Your Odds

In strategy, there are no absolute answers or sure things, and nothing lasts forever. Having a clear definition of winning, a robust analytical framework such as the logic flow, and a thoughtful review process can help organize thinking and improve analysis, but even still, a successful outcome is not guaranteed. In the end, building a strategy isn’t about achieving perfection; it’s about shortening your odds.

Generating Buy-In: The Traditional Approach

In a typical strategy process, participants seek to find the single right answer, build unassailable arguments to support it, and sell it to the rest of the organization (figure 8-1). At the beginning, an internal project team or an external consultant, or both, ...