Richard Rumelt
14 statements across 2 episodes · 1 bullish · 7 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jan 21, 2024 by Richard Rumelt · said 13 times in 5 episodes since 2023 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Richard Rumelt's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (8), Jag Duggal (2), Ben Mann (2), Nicole Forsgren (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 9 mentions in 2 episodes 5 per episode
Everything said about Richard Rumelt, oldest first
Jan 21, 2024 neutral
Business strategy is not a hard science; it relies on historical analogy
“It's very hard to think strategically about the situation you're in, because there isn't a science of strategy. It's not like physics. It's not like engineering, where we can write down the equations of stress on a beam and say, how thick does the beam have to…”
Jan 21, 2024 neutral
The primary cause of bad strategy is lacking a proper problem diagnosis
“So lacking diagnosis is one of the key reasons for bad strategy. The other, the fluff and the incoherent actions are fun to describe, but they're less common. The second major source of a strategy is mistaking goals for strategy.”
Jan 21, 2024 negative
Modern leadership literature focuses on personal self-perfection rather than actually leading others
“If you go to the bookstore and look at the management section in the bookstore, most of it's about leadership. And the leadership is mostly about perfecting yourself. It's not about leading anybody.”
Jan 21, 2024 neutral
Consulting firms reject efficient problem-solving formats to protect their bloated staffing models
“I've talked to a couple of consulting firms about, well, you guys like to learn how to do Foundries, and they say, how does it work? It's one guy for three days. That's not what we do. We do 10 guys for three years. It's not a business model. But that's a nice…”
Jan 21, 2024 neutral
Corporate strategy usually fails due to conflicting internal interests and power struggles
“The problem of strategy inside an organization Is diversity of interest and fear of action. Because action, when you do something in an organization of any size, it involves people changing what they do. It involves changing power relationships among humans in…”
Jan 21, 2024 negative
Formal mission and vision statements are completely unnecessary before creating a strategy
“Cause it's huge numbers of people out there willing to sell you advice on how to mission and your vision and your values and your, all these things that have to be in place before you can have a strategy. And that's not true.”
Jan 21, 2024 negative
Acquiring a portfolio of companies is strategic assembly without actual synthesis
“There are companies that say, well, our future is, let's say, something that's not in a software business. That's an industry portfolio. We're going to have, we're investing in the future of robotics and AI and again, computer vision and all that. That's going…”
Jan 21, 2024 negative
Abstract performance goals, profit targets, and wish lists are not strategy
“Bad strategy the standard bad strategy for a corporation is a set of profit goals or performance goals. A set of goals. Now goals are the engineering of how companies work to some extent, but abstract high level goals, they're not a strategy. They're something…”
Jan 21, 2024 neutral
Effective strategy requires focusing organizational power onto a specifically achievable target
“And that sequence is part of strategic action. You need a source of power I say power. I don't say advantage or efficiency. I say power because there are different ways in which power is exhibited. And you have to focus power on a target that can actually be a…”
Jan 21, 2024 negative
Senior executives do not need external consulting firms to formulate their strategy
“My experience working with companies is that the senior executives have to do this. And my experience is that the senior executives know pretty much everything you need to know to do this. That you don't need, you know, consulting firms to come in and analyze …”
Jan 21, 2024
Strategic power fundamentally requires exploiting competitive asymmetries to create leverage
“For a strategy, you need to exploit an asymmetry of some kind. You're a little faster. Oh, they're alone. Something has to be different between the sort of things. So that's the beginning of power is a symmetry. We can think of it as leverage.”
Jan 21, 2024 positive
Stop calling it a strategy; structure it as a problem-solving action agenda
“My two pieces of advice to anybody that's actually trying to do this is A, state the problem, and B, don't call it a strategy. Call it an action agenda. That you're not creating a strategy. You're creating an action agenda. What are we going to do about this p…”
Jul 25, 2024 negative
Jul 25, 2024 negative
Martin: Rumelt's Procter & Gamble case study had zero connection to reality
“He gave a example of Procter and Gamble. I've been consulting at Procter and Gamble. And know everything about Procter & Gamble, basically. And what he said about Procter & Gamble had zero to do with reality, like zero. It was just completely, utterly, absolut…”