Richard Rumelt

Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does

The kernel is a list reminding us that a good strategy has, at a minimum, three essential components: a diagnosis of the situation, the choice of an overall guiding policy, and the design of coherent action. The concept of the kernel defines the logic of a strategy—the bare-bones minimum. For a strategy to have any bite, it must chart a direction based on a diagnosis of the situation. Absent a diagnosis, one cannot judge one’s own choice of an overall guiding policy, much less someone else’s choice. A strategy must also translate the overall directive into coordinated action focused on key points of leverage in the situation.

Consciously or unconsciously, they seem to resist developing several robust strategies. Instead, most people take their initial insight and tweak it slightly, adding a straw-man alternative, or including options such as “walk away,” or “more study,” that are generic to any situation rather than being responsive to the special circumstances at hand.