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Good Strategy, Bad StrategyBook

by Richard Rumelt

Who uses, recommends or left Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Jason Evanish
Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company; former product lead at KISSmetrics who writes about leadership and product management.
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There are a million books out there talking about strategy and many are unfortunately a lot of fluff. This is not one of those books. Rumelt breaks down the difference between good and bad strategy, and dives hard into what you should really do. One of my favorite parts of the book is the breakdown of what it means to "focus." Unlike a lot of advice that stops at saying "you need to focus", Rumelt explains *how* you can really focus on the right things.

His continuously-updated books page, where every book he reads gets a 1-10 rating and a "Why Read it" note; the book links carry his Amazon affiliate tag. The page carries no publication date for individual entries — its own metadata gives article:published_time 2012-12-16 and article:modified_time 2020-10-28, and books were added across that whole span. (undated page)

2020-10-28·jasonevanish.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.