Strategic Thinking: A Framework for Individual Executives to Elevate Business

"The inability to effectively navigate strategy challenges can have devastating long-term effects on an organization. ... While it's convenient to blame an organization's failings on external factors such as the economy, decisions about strategy account for failure a whopping 70 percent of the time. Yes, strategy does matter. When poor decisions about strategy are made and an organization goes through a revenue stall, it's been shown that, on average, low performance continues for more than 10 years. Unfortunately, this prolonged period of poor performance can lead to bankruptcy. Research on 750 bankruptcies during a 25-year period showed that the number-one factor behind these bankruptcies was bad strategy. Contrary to popular opinion, the researchers attributed the failures to flaws in the strategies themselves, not to poor execution of the strategies. Therefore, it's important to be skilled at crafting strategy."