(Rumelt, ‘Good Strategy / Bad Strategy’, p.20)

How someone can see what others have not, or what they have ignored, and thereby discover a pivotal objective and create an advantage, lies at the very edge of our understanding, something glimpsed only out of the corner of our minds. Not every good strategy draws on this kind of insight, but those that do generate the extra kick that separates “ordinary excellence” from the extraordinary.

Unless leadership offers a theory of why things haven’t worked in the past, or why the challenge is difficult, it is hard to generate good strategy.

In general, people will not push further because the analysis of unstructured information is hard, time-consuming work that requires both a rich knowledge of facts and well-developed skills in logic, deduction, and induction.

Historical perspective helps you make judgments about importance and significance.