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Great Strategy Leads To Success
Conclusion: Sometimes the path to strategy success is a straightforward one – it just requires focus, talent, and great implementation.
Reference: It's All in the Sauce – Excerpt from "Winning" by Jack Welch.
Why This Book Is Important: Jack Welch made his stellar career by cutting quickly and determinedly into the center of an issue. In this case, he explains how to "get strategy right" by breaking down strategy into discreet and executable steps. Though certainly not as simple as Jack makes it out to be, developing a strategic plan for your organization does not have to be an overly complex or arduous undertaking. And, when done right, successfully implementing the right strategy can transform your brand, organization, and stamp in the marketplace.
Major Findings: There are three major steps to accomplishing great strategy:
It is very important to identify what it is that gives your company its sustainable competitive advantage. By asking yourself questions about where you stand in the marketplace, what is going on with your competition, what initiatives are currently underway or in consideration, what's coming up in the future, and what your "winning move" is, you can better understand how to differentiate your company from the competition and sustain this competitive edge.
Getting the right people in the right jobs is also critical. Jack emphasizes that this is really about "match" and gives good illustrative examples of how certain individuals were uniquely matched for particular jobs. Moreover, the resulting talent matches were in alignment with strategy execution.
Strategy is also about finding and continually improving upon best practices. Take the time to a) evaluate how you currently operate your business, b) benchmark this against your competition, and c) execute upon improvements that truly make a lasting competitive difference.
What Does It Mean To You? Any time you can apply the KIS (Keep It Simple) principle, you should take advantage of it. Here you have a company that is hugely successful and this has been accomplished largely through the leadership of Jack Welch. He applied some straightforward principles and steps to a multi-billion dollar organization and truly put GE on the map as one of the world's great companies. Like great pizza, it's all about the secret sauce.
