Welcome back to 52 Weeks of Marketing Wisdom, where we review and recommend a new book weekly across five themes: Foresight, Customer, Strategy, Creativity & Innovation, plus two extras to complete the 52.
Our program is for busy marketing professionals seeking inspiration and growth through reading.
Rather than a simple review, we've evolved our blog posts to bring a point of view to the work and focus on how it informs what we do at Selbey Labs.
We are currently focused on Strategy for the next few weeks and this week we're looking at an absolute classic of the genre, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.
Hope you enjoy it.
Stop Confusing Goals with Strategy
Everyone loves a good strategy.
But here’s the problem—most of what we call strategy isn’t strategy at all.
It’s fluff. It’s a wish list of goals with no plan for how to achieve them. It’s vague mission statements about “being the best” or “leading the market” or “delivering excellence.”
That’s not strategy.
That’s fantasy.
And that’s exactly what Richard Rumelt takes a hammer to in *Good Strategy, Bad Strategy*. If you’re serious about understanding what strategy is—and what it isn’t—you need to read this book. Because, let’s be honest, most of us are drowning in bad strategy, and we don’t even know it.
The Problem with Bad Strategy
Bad strategy is everywhere.
It’s in the businesses that chase every shiny opportunity without stopping to think. It’s in the boardrooms where executives nod along to meaningless jargon. It’s in the marketing plans that mistake “becoming a leader in the digital space” for an actual strategy.
Rumelt says it straight: bad strategy doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s the result of lazy thinking, leadership dysfunction, and a failure to make hard choices.
And the biggest sin of all? Confusing goals with strategy.
A goal is what you want to achieve. “We want to grow by 20% next year.” “We want to dominate our category.”
Great. Who doesn’t?
But strategy is how you’re going to get there. It’s about the hard work of diagnosing the real problems, choosing where to focus, and deciding what to do—and what not to do.
Bad strategy skips that work. It hides behind buzzwords and big ambitions because real strategy takes courage. It means making choices, saying no to things, and concentrating your resources where they matter most.
That’s why bad strategy feels so comfortable—it avoids all the uncomfortable decisions.
But comfortable doesn’t win markets.
What Good Strategy Looks Like
Rumelt says good strategy has a "kernel", and it’s made of three parts:
1. Diagnosis: What’s the real problem here? Not the surface-level symptoms, but the root cause.
2. Guiding Policy: What’s the high-level approach we’re going to take to solve that problem?
3. Coherent Actions: What specific steps are we going to take, and how do they fit together?
It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
Take Nvidia, the chipmaker. In the early 2000s, Nvidia was a small player in the semiconductor industry, facing stiff competition from giants like Intel and AMD. The diagnosis? Nvidia realized it couldn’t compete head-to-head in general-purpose processors. The guiding policy? Focus on a niche: graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming. The coherent actions? Nvidia invested heavily in GPU research, partnered with gaming companies, and positioned itself as the best solution for gamers.
That’s good strategy. It’s clear. It’s focused. And it works.
Now compare that to a bad strategy. Think about any company that announces they want to “unlock their potential” or “lead in innovation.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? But there’s no diagnosis, no guiding policy, no coherent actions. It’s all fluff, no substance.
The Power of Focus
Good strategy is about focus. Rumelt uses the analogy of a lever. A lever works because it concentrates force on a single point. The same goes for strategy—you can’t spread your resources everywhere and expect to move the world.
Look at Nvidia again. By narrowing its focus to GPUs, it didn’t just survive—it thrived. GPUs became essential not only for gaming but also for AI, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing. Nvidia didn’t try to do everything. It concentrated its efforts where it could win.
Bad strategy, on the other hand, tries to be everything to everyone. And in doing so, it becomes nothing.
Why Leaders Need This Book
Here’s the tough truth Rumelt lays out: most bad strategy is the result of bad leadership.
Leaders shy away from tough decisions. They confuse ambition with strategy. They talk about “synergies” and “blue-sky thinking” instead of rolling up their sleeves and addressing real problems.
But real leadership means making the hard calls. It means diagnosing challenges honestly, even when the answers aren’t pretty. It means saying no to distractions and focusing on what matters.
Good strategy isn’t flashy. It doesn’t rely on jargon or big promises. It’s practical. It’s disciplined. And it works.
That’s why this book is so important. It doesn’t just tell you what good strategy looks like—it teaches you how to think strategically.
Lessons for Marketing Professionals
If you’re in marketing, you know the pressure to perform. Every quarter, there’s a new set of goals, a new platform to master, a new trend to chase. But chasing everything isn’t strategy—it’s panic.
Rumelt’s approach is a wake-up call for marketers drowning in fluff. He reminds us to step back, diagnose the real problems, and focus on where we can make the biggest impact.
Maybe the problem isn’t your SEO or your TikTok presence. Maybe the real problem is your messaging doesn’t resonate with your audience. Or your budget is spread too thin across too many channels.
Good strategy means figuring out where to play and how to win—and then aligning everything around that.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is a must-read because it cuts through the noise. Rumelt doesn’t sugarcoat things. He calls out the lazy thinking, the buzzwords, and the wishful goals that masquerade as strategy. And then he shows you what to do instead.
This book will make you uncomfortable. It will make you question your own plans and decisions. But that’s the point. Real strategy isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
So stop confusing goals with strategy. Stop chasing every shiny object. And start thinking clearly about what it takes to win.
Because, as Rumelt puts it: “If you fail to identify the problem, solving it is impossible.”
And that’s why this book matters. It teaches you how to see the problem, craft the solution, and make it happen. No fluff. Just strategy that works.
If you'd like to talk about applying this thinking, please visit us at www.selbeylabs.io
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt