"Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response of pride to failure."
Relevance: New Insights on Strategy
I just finished the book Relevance by David Apgar. It’s a heady read but after plowing through it I think Apgar lays out some pretty insightful and down-to-earth ideas that I can put to use.
The essence of the book is this: strategy should be more about clarifying and testing assumptions and perhaps less about tactics and execution. Making this shift, argues Apgar, is what enables an organization to learn over time and get better.
Here’s one quote: “Learning from experience requires three things: the development of performance strategies explicit enough to be testable, the derivation of performance indicators from the assumptions behind those strategies, and the use of performance results to reveal errors in goals and assumptions as well as execution.” (Page 11)
I’ve modified Apgar’s ideas and changed some of the terminology to fit the style in which I like to work and put them into a one-page summary if you’re interested in how I’m applying the ideas.
"Can you maintain faith in God when there is no evidence of His activity in your life, family, culture, and the world? Your answer to that question determines the way you’ll respond to the uncertainty in the world today."
"When an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall. Although complacency and resistance to change remain dangers to any successful enterprise, overreaching better captures how the mighty fall."
"Fire yourself on Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turnaround leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change? If you can’t then you need to reinvent yourself."
"God does things His way because it’s His universe. You may have a better way, but you don’t have a universe."
Relevance: New Insights on Strategy
I just finished the book Relevance by David Apgar. It’s a heady read but after plowing through it I think Apgar lays out some pretty insightful and down-to-earth ideas that I can put to use.
The essence of the book is this: strategy should be more about clarifying and testing assumptions and perhaps less about tactics and execution. Making this shift, argues Apgar, is what enables an organization to learn over time and get better.
Here’s one quote: “Learning from experience requires three things: the development of performance strategies explicit enough to be testable, the derivation of performance indicators from the assumptions behind those strategies, and the use of performance results to reveal errors in goals and assumptions as well as execution.” (Page 11)
I’ve modified Apgar’s ideas and changed some of the terminology to fit the style in which I like to work and put them into a one-page summary if you’re interested in how I’m applying the ideas.
