If strategy is necessary, possible, and important, it is nonetheless difficult.
Evidence of ill-conceived, inadequately thought-through, poor, or counterproductive strategies abounds. Building on the list of “common strategy sins” Richard Rumelt has culled from his long experience with business strategy, one can identify at least ten recurring pitfalls that can undermine competent strategic performance.
- Failure to recognize or take seriously the scarcity of resources.
- Mistaking strategic goals for strategy.
- Failure to recognize or state the strategic problem.
- Choosing poor or unattainable strategic goals.
- Not defining the strategic challenge competitively.
- Making false presumptions about one’s own competence or the likely causal linkages between one’s strategy and one’s goals.
- Insufficient focus on strategy due to such things as trying to satisfy too many different stakeholders or bureaucratic processes.
- Inaccurately determining one’s areas of comparative advantage relative to the opposition.
- Failure to realize that few individuals possess the cognitive skills and mindset to be competent strategists.
- Failure to understand the adversary.
In World War II Hitler fell pray to most of these pitfalls, whereas the British
and American leaders mostly avoided them due to the collegiate process by which
Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Brooke argued out their strategic choices. Hitler
could, and did, override his generals, whereas none of the four Allied grand strategists could override the other three, and the occasions when they split two-against two usually resulted in compromises that also avoided outright blunders.
The persistent recurrence of these strategy pitfalls argues that deciding in whose hands to place US strategy in the twenty-first century is a critical issue. The fact is, however, that few individuals — regardless of intelligence, education, credentials or experience — possess the necessary cognitive skills and insight to be competent strategists. The insight to see more deeply than one’s opponents into the possibilities and probabilities of a competitive situation is rare. Strategy may be a game anyone can play, but the evidence is strong that very few can play it well.
Thus, identifying individuals with the mindset and talents to craft strategy competently is one step the United States will need to take to regain strategic competence.