Know: ‘timing is everything.’

ketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.”
Your strategy should be some unique synthesis of features, de-
sign, quality, service, and cost. You have succeeded in building an en-
viable strategy when it has created such an advantageous market
position that competition can only retaliate over a long time period
and at a prohibitive cost.
What is bad strategy? We know it when we see it.
• Yesterday’s strategy. Sears and GM, for example, tend to be re-
sponsive to the marketplace of yesterday. “You can’t have a
better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all
the time.”
(Charles F. Kettering, American inventor) In too
many companies, the old strategy is “baked in.” Dee Hock,
CEO emeritus of Visa, said: “The problem is never how to
get new innovative thoughts into the mind, but how to
get the old ones out.”
• Protectionism. American steel companies lack strategy because
they spend their time urging protectionism. Protectionism is a
sure way to lose your business.
Strategy
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• Marketing shootouts. Price wars and mutual destruction indi-
cate the absence of strategy rather than its presence.
• Overfocusing on problems. Peter Drucker warned against