YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Rumelt

lines on the record: 93
first: 2024-01-21
most recent: 2024-01-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's from time to time after the founders all say to me, well, where's the strategy? Where's the document with the mission vision? All that. That's not what we do. We're doing an action agenda The foundry is time consuming and Bit expensive to some extent And most of the times we've had salaries. They really help the company. Gather its wits and its resources and do something. I'm very pleased with how the foundries work. It's not so easy to figure out how to take foundary concept any expand it. I've talked to a couple consulting firms about, well, guys, like, well, how did your founder? Show you 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 asymmetry for me because, you know, they're not going to compete with me.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when people look at that, because they haven't ever done this before. They see it at 25 different talks or challenges. Realize you can't do them all. So they begin to get this sense, oh, geez, we better focus better focus on something. Better do something about some of these. We begin to go through this thing which ones are really important and which ones are really addressable. Sometimes we don't know if they're accessible or not. Oh, well, is there anybody or she does know? Is there someone we could fly in here has some perspective on this? How do we, you know, so we begin to try to identify the one or two key challenges that can actually be addressed? And what are we going to do about it? What are the coherent actions we do to take these off? Sticks or so.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At this point in my life, I do public speaking. I speak on strategy and growth. Just got back from Korea doing it. I taught there. Do a little bit of teaching, not much, maybe for the military, if you want me to come in and do a day-on strategy. Two Foundry is where you commit to a problem oriented approach to strategy, where the organizational leader, the CEO usually, plus another seven or eight people take two to three or four days off. And we meet and we try to come up with in the end an action agenda. And it's an interpersonal exercise. I mean, the facilitator, I don't tell them what to do. I urge them to look more deeply and to understand what these problems actually are. It's interesting to do a founding, if I focus on problems, as I do at the beginning. I'll often get 25 different problems up on the board or post-it notes around.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a little website called the Cruxbook.com. Has information about me and about the books. There, or don't write to me at UCLI, and I don't pay attention to UCLA website anymore, but if you go to the Cruxbook.com, there's some email addresses where I can be reached. My little company is called General Imagination Street. It's like General Motors, but a lot smaller, it's just me. And you're going to reach me at Richard at Generalange.com. You know, you can help me out. All college stories. Stories about your experiences trying to create strategies, particularly inside organizations. How does it work for you trying to get something done inside organizations? I'm happy to add more stories to my rippet farm. And”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That ways of creating that kind of tension in writing doesn't work as much in business writing as I'd like, but I try to create this sense of it's good strategy, bad strategy. There's a tension between right-wing, wrong way, or if not a right and wrong way, at least there's a tension between should we go left or should we go right? It makes it interesting. Otherwise, it's Doesn't catch people's emot”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Cassandra is, oh my God, she's got like 25 books on the air, Transbestrol. It's the cheap picture now. She started writing when she was. 12 or 13. A talent for home. She's told me about the tension that you have to create, you know, you know, and she writes novels. And that, you know, it's not interesting unless there's. She started talking about this when she was young, she was 14, and she asked me what is romance. Well, romances are barrier. Rench is where there's a difficulty. And, you know, there's some kind of, she said, Oh, like he's red, she's poor. Yeah, back then. Or he comes from the north side of town. She comes from the south. I said, like that. Yes. And she said, oh, like he's a vampire and she's not. Okay, you know, but so, yeah, yeah, she has alerted me and taught me about that.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to have a final lecture I give to my MBA students about little pieces of wisdom. Things not to do Things that offend people in other cultures. Don't do this if you're a turkey, it means something else there. But I'd also say at some point. Your spouse or your partner will ask you, do you still love me? There's only one correct answer to Which is more than ever. Wedding ring shows that inside it more than ever Oh, that's what you're looking for, but”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“12 inch reflecting telescope. And it's too heavy to look around. It's too difficult to set up. But there are a set of new smart telescopes that run on a battery and you can put them outside. And the way they work is, first of all, they know where everything is in the sky. Has been around for a long time. The new thing is they It's like astrophotography. They'll look at something for a minute, two minutes, ten minutes, an hour, and form an image. You don't look through the telescope, you look at it on your phone or your computer, but you can see now the nebul That maybe the Webb telescope could see you could see it now, you can see stuff out there. That you couldn't afford. These were new things for a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars that are remarkable in what they can do.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This new memory phone bed that we like, it's pretty amazing innovation, it's pretty. Didn't think we liked that, but we do. I really am fascinated by him about to pull the trigger on buying one of these new smart telescopes.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like to ask people about what have you done? Was R that you're Have you done that that was difficult And what was it? And why was it difficult? How did you get it done? Like to ask people about what they think Was an interesting strategy from any time in the past that warranted. Want to call out. Depending on the person's background, I might ask about a particular company or situation. Let's say, you know, why do you think this worked or why didn't it work? So, I don't tend to ask. Questions about theory and ask questions about things that happened. Part of me, I'm looking to, you know, does this person have any knowledge about the world or are they just? Just know what Professor said last year. So that kind of thing.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, sure. Well, I like Yellowstone, I like everybody. Fascinated by recent movies other than y'all's. I'm not sure. We don't have a GV in the house right now, so I'm sort of not connected.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, Rockefeller was a Gronker environment and he built an empire and all that. You learn that in school. But what you don't learn in school is you dropped the cost of a gallon of kerosene from $1 to 10 cents That's the rabbit. He made kerosene so inexpensive that he drove all the little lam and fires out of business, which is why they hated him. Vicious competitor. He dropped the price of something by an order of bangladesh. Fascinating. So, yeah, I mean, it's important to understand stories. Just curious, but stories.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To Biz, you know, I mean, the books, Clayton Christians and stuff about the innovators dilemma is always solid. Books on strategy that I recommend to other people, there aren't that many. So I like playing to win. By Roger Mart Really recommend Kinds of books, strategy books. I mean, it's easy to get a list of strategy Ali, I think you should read biographies and histories. I think the book about Steve Jobs is brilliant. I like books about business leaders. Recommend Andy Gross book. Only the paranoia survived. A few others, but I recommend that people read more broadly about people, Rockefeller's histories. Fantastic. The guy and the stuff about Rockefeller and how he put together.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the secret technique that they had in this program for Kiringerstein was to yell at you and telling you, don't do that. And so I'm thinking about a book called About a business thing I'm not sure it makes sense, but. Have to noodle these things for a while before they begin to gel”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife Keith took up skiing when we got married 24, 25 years ago. She had a stem that she couldn't get rid of when you make a turn, you know, turn like that, put this key out and snapped. Right. Meet her ski on ski. I did all sorts of things to her. She couldn't fix it. Finally, we signed up with that. Illustrious teacher in Aspen three tense programming guaranteeing You would lose your staff And so we went there On the second day, I follow behind the instructor to see what was going on. And they had been through some exercises on day one. But in day two, they were focusing on her ski like that. And he'd yell at her. He'd say, don't do that. And after a day of being yelled at, don't do that. She didn't do it anymore. She was fixed.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to share with you that strategy is not mysterious that I've spent my life studying strategy, pursuing it, consulting on it, writing about it. It's not mysterious. It's about solving problems. It's about solving the most important problem you're facing that you actually do something about. Don't have to be some to the call of the strategy. But you need to be focused on something doable and be consistent about it. I have a long list of things not to do as a fourth book. I'm thinking about writing called Don't Do That.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, the idea of how do you make something better, how do you make it perfect? What were the perfect light switch look like and so on? Is there no real simple, silly questions, but they lead to new businesses new first if you pursue them?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's opportunities there. Now, a lot of the times the opportunities are blocked by the lack of certain materials, regulation. Regulators have decided that you can't sell a car in the United States unless it goes through a So that holds back innovation in that business. How should plumbing actually work? Well, there's all sorts of rules about how plumbing works and electrical things work. You can't innovate there very easily because of the underwriter's legs and their unions and a lot of the stuff that's done in home construction is there to create jobs to reduce costs. So, how do you get around that? So, you have to look at places where it's possible at any first of all.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you go down the list of things that a window should do. It should let in light, but not light. It should let in air, but not the noise. It should not let in if you don't want it. It should not let in the bugs. It should maybe have sugars or not sugars. And so I said, well, how could you design the perfect winga? What would it look like? And there's some kids at MIT that had developed this thing that lets in here but keeps out the noise, these little order. Filters. About noises on certain frequencies. We don't have a perfect one. But, you know, think about it. Windows could be better than they are. And that's a real simple device that we're all familiar. And to look around you, look at everything you've got and say, well, how should it be?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A channel, Salesforce.com got started was, well, how should this be? It shouldn't be a computer. It should be a web page. Lake Amazon, where it has So that was the beginning of Salesforce.com. I asked a Greek both students once to think about the perfect window. Just physical is something we could think about in the classroom without doing a lot of research. Follow it's a perfect window. A perfect window should be transparent, should let the sun in. All right, so it's let in the light, but not all the time. Sometimes you want to watch television. So it should also dark. Drags for Shady's Okay, it should let in the air. Good, but not the bugs. It's let in the air, but not the noise. That's a little harder.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like the other exercise I used to take my students through. I called Value Den. What is it that you should be able to buy that you can't? And at the time, I taught this stuff. I was upset because I would lose my baggage and all nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Paris. So I'd like to buy bags. Sure. So I'd like to buy a, you know, how do you get your baggage not to be lost? Now with security systems in place, let's come in. Can I find someone to help me remodel my home that's going to be on time and I'll put you? Not available. Can't buy it in price. If I live in Hong Kong and I'm going to the airport, I can drought my luggage off downtown and it arrives at the airport check. Have to let it. Can't I do that in the US? Believe that I. Engineering, you know, thinking about Something ought to be.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An Arab saying that I like that says he who forecasts the future lies even if he tells the truth. Making bets. That's what business is. We're making a bet. If we're a rich company, We could make a bed and afford to be right. But if for a Have to be flat. We have to adapt as the information comes in. That's the nature of the story. The action agenda has to be quick adaptation to changing conditions.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's very, very entrepreneurial, very edgy stuff. But it's not. Back and read about the beginnings of the electrical industry or the beginnings of aviation or the beginnings of motorized this and beginnings of cars People had to bet about what this industry would look like. The first cars were electric cars. Proof cart sold in quantity in the United States where electric delivery vehicles used downtown and cities, delivery products for electric rano batteries. With the vet. That changed the First World War. The United States built thousands and thousands of gasoline powered trucks to go to Europe and rustled through the mud. And people came back knowing how to fix those engines and those trucks got sold off its wholesale to farmers and use them on their fields and we had the gas take off like a rocket. You cannot predict the future.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A search like a truffle hound searching with a truffle that's going on. And you've got to be, I think, you've got to be two minds. Like so many things in business when you're doing that, you've got to be of two lines. You've got to be convinced of the certainty that you're going to win. And you've got to be willing to shift when things aren't working. And that's a double jointed exercise that some people can do, and some people can't. It's almost a human skill to both commit and to be willing to move. It to bed. You should be clear in your own mind about the nature of the situation, the technology that you're betting on. Sometimes it's evolving so fast. like generative AI right now. You can't be You're going to take a position. Where do you think things are going to be in a year?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some people aren't that even advanced. They basically say, I know how to make something and I'm going to try to sell last track. Well, if you have any chance of succeeding, you haven't since you have a target market and you have a solution to the target market, probably. And now you're going to go after it. And the research that we have done on the startups is that Generally, The ones that survive and prosper switch. They say, well, it isn't that customer, it's a different customer. You go off from that customer. Oh, and that customer wants a slightly different product and they switch over a period of a year or two, bang, bang. Until something begins to click and they begin to grow and begin to add functions and assets.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you're dealing with a lot of uncertainty. When you're a founder and a startup, you're making a bet. Making a bet. Like a well wildcatter would say, I bet there's a whale under this ground. We're going to drill. We're going to find it. There's a certain amount of bet that's clanged on. You should be clear about the nature of the bad. The reality is going to be revealed to you in bits and pieces as time passes. Whether a certain approach is going to work or not. What we find doing research on Silicon Valley startups. They start out typically. Aiming at a particular product market solution. And the idea that you have in your head is there's a set of customers who want A, would like to have A, or being denied A, but We have a way of giving them something, product or service.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you look at no kid, you know, one of the big examples of strategic. Or Nokia was the leading smart filmmaker in the world. Somehow I lost its ability to compete. Interesting question. It's been a fair amount of research on this how did that happen? One way it happened They replaced the engineers who used to run the company with lawyers and accounts. Think wrong with lawyers and accountants, but they didn't have a feel for this hardware software set of issues. Another was they put in a matrix organization that so diffused power. Inside the organization that nobody was actually in charge of anything in particular. I'm exaggerating. But the CEO kept pounding the desk and saying, you know, Apple's coming out with his smartphone and you have a touch screen and somebody here should make one of those.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up. That's true. One of the things we see in government, particularly is. Presidents have a hard time getting advice because they surround themselves with people who want to please them, number one. Rarely, you know, it used to be. I remember during Woodrow Wilson's administration when he decided to take some hard action, the Lusitaneous sank, and he had to do something vis- ⁇-vis Germany. The Secretary of State disagreed and quit. Back, that was it. Quit. I disagree. Don't see that so much anymore. long the Organizations get frozen because The difficulty of Changing positions, interest and power in Charlotte.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has a vision and people happen in the 80s. There's a whole literature there about transformational leadership that has percolated through the system. And those... I'm not in this leadership. But you have to tell people at some point we're going to do this and we're going to do it this way. And Bob's going to be in charge of this aspect and Joan's going to be in charge of that aspect. There's a hesitancy to do to make those choices because that part of the action agenda.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's become hard for people to do this. 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. Not about getting anybody. The theory is that if you perfect yourself and somehow raise come out of your head and people will follow you because you're so magnetic and you're so perfect and you're so wonderful and you're so insightful and people will follow you won't ever have to say figures do that it's so embarrassing to tell somebody what to do And so this is the world we should live in today One of the problems in doing strategy is that it's somehow been displaced by this literary form about mission. And management is being displaced by leadership, which is the idea that the leader”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if we go this way, then Bullton can give more money for that. And so their interests are not alike. Is part of what Phil was referring to. And so the problem of strategy inside organization. Diversity of interest and fear of action. Goes ancient when you do something. The organization of any size involves people changing what they do. It involves changing power relationships among humans in some way. Someone who's been the alpha maybe is not the alpha anymore. Someone else is the alpha. This is heavy stuff. And this is why. We have a hierarchy because someone in the end has to say it's going to be this way. That people were hesitant to do that. CEOs are hesitant to do that, more so today than when I was a young man.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should you ask the CEO or to come up with it? Should he hire a consultant? How do you do this? In my experience, working with a company, Is that the senior executives have to do this? My experience is that the senior executives know pretty much everything you need to know to do this, that you don't need Consulting firms to come in and analyze everything and to do. Yes, you'll gain some insight if they come in and do a competitive analysis and a customer analysis and all of that. But the basic issues, the challenges you're facing, they know that. It's not mysterious. They know all that stuff. They disagree about the importance of different things And more importantly, they occupy positions of power that if we go this way, This is going to be”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every little bit of information combs with an agenda sometimes, obviously. And how do you put all this stuff together, come up with a strategy? Do you academics have a solution to this? I said, no, we don't. We don't know much more than what you were two, three thousand years ago, which you should put five to eight smart people in a room and you tell them to come up with. But his question. Is at the heart of what I call a founder. Is how do you get Group of people to coalesce around an action agenda. And what process would you? Aaron, how do you do that? It's a different question than what should our strategy be? The question is, well, how should you go about creating a strategy? Should you ask the product manager to write a town?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different opinions, so that's They have interest. That they may not state clearly. I interviewed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld while Invading Iraq. Second I was actually never even about budget matters. Asks me, well, what do you do professor? I said, Well, I'd be You said, well, strategy that's a hard subject. He said, you know, I've got. Expert on anything you want to know the clan structure in Iraq, we got people that know, you want to know the weather, we got people to know, how many sorties we can fly in 24 hours people know. I got anything you want to know, we got someone who knows that, but they all disagree. Each of their own private agenda. They have a contract they want to get, they have a company they want to support. Conceptual idea they were pushed.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, I'll say typically we need hierarchy of power. Because there has to be some mechanism Deciding what we're going to do. And there's people with different interests and different. Private interest and public interest and somehow there has to be a choice about putting some of these aside and doing this. You can't say our strategy is to do everything that everybody wants to do. What happens when you form a committee in a city and you say, What's our city strategy? They say, Oh, we're going to paint the park benches, we're going to clean up the grass, we're going to build this, they have a lot of everything they're going to do with that. And anybody who raised their hand and says, well, what about the burge? Can we, you know, oh, yeah, let's put that in too. That doesn't go anywhere We inside organizations, people have.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can come while you're driving the car, can come the next day, it can call in the Charles Dorray reports that his insight into the Nature revolution came as he stepped off. A carriage into the village trading somewhere. Oh, suddenly, oh yeah, Zumbius. Like how we raise animals. Read the strongest. Sure. Why was that so hard for me to see?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Designers experience this sense of Focusing on the crux of the problem, the hard part And then seeing a true true. That strategy. Strategy isn't picky strategy out of a list of common It's looking at the problem. What makes that problem Seeing a way to solve it. Is called Insight, and Insight is scary. Scary because it's not guaranteed to happen. We want to innovate, but we're scared of insight. We want to be the first, but we'd like to pick our strategy off a list of common strategies for being Want to keep We don't want to study Nut to have an insight. So insight is critical. Insight is not magical. It calls from immersing yourself in the nature of the problem and you will have Some point, and it's about how to deal with it. It doesn't always come when we wanted to.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, pest the planets into interstellar space where. Floating around right now. Well, one of the problems is, how do you know where Jupiter is? It's right there. Okay, how do you know where it is? Walter Miners are on her mind. You know exactly where it is. We set a mission to Mars, we were off by 500 miles So Jupyter, how do we know exactly where it is? We can look at it through our telescope so we can look at it from the right side of our orbit and all this side of our orbit, but still there's a couple thousand miles error in that. That's too much. That studying that problem, the simple solution suddenly flashed. I wish I could play those mind. It wasn't, which is, oh, take a picture of it while we're heavily there. Send that picture back, and we'll see it against the distant stars, and now we'll have our triangle.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, you can build a rectangular building out of glass that Cock will get her. Surely not That design insight is something that Software engineers, hardware engineers, mechanical engineers, space science engineers like I was experienced when we look at a dilemma. And we try to focus on what makes this hard. And then by focusing on the difficulty. We see a way El Focused on, well, why is it so hard? He used a rocking, and it's so hard because as it comes back into the planet at 18,000 miles an hour, it burns up in the atmosphere or we have to spend a lot of money on each shoes. At some instant, he said to himself, Why not like science fiction, just turn it around and have it land on its rocket? Starting off sure. Well, why don't we carry more fuel? So, SpaceX Was designing. Was a conceptual designer, but machine became Voy”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whether they're an engineer or an architect or someone else, there's usually a challenge. I can pay. Was hired to take a look at the loom in Paris. And they had a dusty parking lot in the center. This giant power that had become a museum. And they wanted an interest to Lou there. And the problem is they didn't want, he didn't want to, they didn't want like a new building out obscure Balou because Louvre itself, the building itself is part of the storage part of the scene. Yet at the same time, they needed feminine interests because the entrance at that time was all from the side or a sidewalk. You looked at the situation and the competing needs and the problems. You had an insight into well, build a transparent building, build a building out glass. See through and loot doesn't obscure.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And the idea comes from a design. And it comes from climate. I used to be a climber, a rock climber. In a snow climber. And the crux in a climb is the hardest part. The hardest pitch or a pitch, the hardest move, is the crux of that piece. And then the basic advice to a climber is if you can't do the crux, don't do the climb, you're going to fall off there. Now, that's not exactly true because you can try over and over again until you get it. But in general, particularly if you're looking at an alpine climb, you better not take it on a climb where you can't handle the crucs. Why people go bolder? The builder's still up to him And so that's what the concept of the Christ consumed. Now, in business, Crutch is the hardest part. And from the design point of view, skill desires.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if it's a big company, the actually starts swaying, extend over two or three years. Smaller company took a loading in six months for a year. There's things we're going to do. Goals were going to achieve. These are things we're going to do, action steps. That's sort of the way I put it together today, which is slightly different than the way put together in the crux.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today, and what's making that clarim? What are the challenges? So you're choosing a challenge. You're choosing The possible challenges you could face up to. You can't do them all. So there's a focus. Choosing which challenge to focus on, and that challenge has to be A, important. B, it has to be achievable. It has to be something that you can address. It has to be an addressable challenge. So the search for an action agenda Coin Is this balance between Problems that are important because they're close to your ambition and problems that you can actually address and do something about. And that overlap then becomes Choice you make. Okay, we're going to go after this. And here's the action steps we're going to take to do that.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All have ambitions, and every company should have Look at all those ambitions and let's say I'm 25 years old. Well, what's keeping me from reaching them all? I'm not ready to join board of directors, I'm not experienced enough. Oh, okay, so I put that over here. Can't afford it to cut it over here about the ambitions, did you have any chance of making progress on now? Well, beautiful woman, yeah. I don't know any women polyotomy if you can do something about that. Which of your ambitions? Can you begin to make progress towards reaching? What's holding you back? What are the barriers? What are the problems? I approach the question of the problem now through the filter of the answer. The teacher ambition is fine. Let's accept them all. And which one can you actually make some progress on?”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a huge number of people out there willing to sell you advice or hide admission and your vision and your values and all these things that have to be replaced before you can have a strategy. Not true A different Start now with ambition because people want to put ambitions in place, they get angry with me Don't allow them to talk about their missions. So we start with it. Okay, you have all these ambitions. Now, right in the crux that when I was 25, I wanted to be a top business school professor. I wanted to be on forgery directors. I wanted to drive a morgan, drop head plus four. I wanted to climb in the great mountains of the world. I wanted to learn to fly an aircraft. I wanted to marry a beautiful woman and have successful children. Wanted to have a townhouse on the eel summer wee in Paris. I had a lot of interest. That's not”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of the problem is that the concept of strategy has been So beaten up by thousands. Hundreds of books and thousands of websites that people have a hard time. Trying to figure out how to create a strategy because they're drawn up, down, left, right. Two pieces of advice anybody's actually trying to do this. A, state the pro. And B, don't call it a strong. Call it an action agenda. That you're not creating a strategy. Creating an action agenda Are we going to do about this problem? That's essence of what you're doing when you're thinking strategically. You're recognizing the problem. You have an action agenda to deal with it. It's not five years out, ten years out, it's not your general mission to build a better world. It's none of that All of that is a different Literature form.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I wrote the crutch because I felt that kernel was not sufficiently sharp enough for people. And even in the crux. I could rewrite the crux book. I would maybe write it a little differently today. Whole couple things I would change First, it's really important to understand the Problem diagnosis is not merely. Understanding the world. It's understanding the challenge you face. What makes it hard? The question I ask client is exactly that. Makes it Client will tell me We want to open up business in Australia. It's a market we haven't had. And I'll say, okay, so why are you an i took that? You're the CEO. Just tell somebody to do it. What makes it hard? Oh, well, we don't know anybody in Australia. And they kicked us out. He'll tell me if you push, he'll tell you why it's hard. But that understanding hasn't been percolated into.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a colleague at UCLA who assigned a book to NBA students and they went to the dean. A book. He wants to read a book.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And look as much data as you can and practice that. That's what education should be in a business school. It's not. They teach theories now because it's so much easier to teach a theory than intellectual.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“West Kaplan at the public pie, the Adakshi curve goes up like this. Peaks. Declines, and then it comes back up again. Because it comes to a point where everybody who can afford Then the new sales drop off. In my mind, that's what I saw, 1999. I think everybody go to four car, had a car. Auto industry began first signs of the Great Depression were in the auto industry. So that was my plank that I read. Now, I don't see anybody else writing about that. That's the exercise. And to exercise your mind about trying to understand complex situations, it's best to go back. Don't have to quit the great depression, but you can go and try and find situations that other people have to deal with.”
2024-01-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source