‘The Crux’ by Richard Rumelt

If you’re interested in strategy this is a must read.

A worthy successor to ‘Good Strategy, Bad Strategy’, this book sets out Rumelt’s approach to tackling tricky business problems.

There is so much valuable advice in this book, it’s impossible to summarise. So, I’m just going to reproduce a slightly edited version of the final page of Rumelt’s introduction.

I hope it inspires you to read the book – you can thank me afterwards. 😊

“Too many people start with goals and other visions of a desired end state.

Start with the challenge and diagnose its structure and the forces at work. Find the crux – the most critical part of the challenge that you can actually expect to solve.

Understand the sources of power and leverage that are relevant to your situation and use one or more of them. Wishing and willpower are not enough.

Avoid bright, shiny distractions. Don’t spend days on mission statements; don’t start with goals in strategy work. Don’t confuse management tools with strategy. Don’t get caught up chasing quarterly results.

There are multiple pitfalls when working on strategy in a group.

Start with the challenge, avoid deciding on actions too quickly, define the crux and design coherent actions to overcome it.”