Strategy

What Hacker News says

1. nyrikkiMar 2025
   An example of a typical nieve definition of a mission statement is:

   Concise, clear, and memorable statement that outlines a company's core purpose, values, and target audience.

   > "made operational/actionable at a strategic level".

   Taken the common definition from the first part of this plan, what do you think the average manager would do given that in the social sciences, operationalization is explicitly about measuring abstract qualities. [1]

   "operationalization" is a compromise, trying to quantify qualitative properties, it is not typically subject to methods like MECE principal, because there are too many unknown unknowns.

   You are correct that "operationalization" and "strategic intent" are not mutually exclusive in all aspects, but they are for mission statements that need to be durable across changes that no CEO can envision.

   The "made operational/actionable at a strategic level" is the exact claim of pseudo scientific management theory (Greater Taylorism) that Japan directly targeted to destroy the US manufacturing sector. You can look at the former CEO of Komatsu if you want direct evidence.

   GM:s failure to learn form Toyota at NUMII (sp?) is another.

   The planning process needs to be informed by stratagy, but planning is not strategic, it has a limited horizon.

   But you are correct that it is more nuanced and neither Taylor nor Tolstoy allowed for that.

   Neo-classical org theory is when bounded rationality was first acknowledged, although the Prussian military figured that out long before Taylor grabbed his stopwatch to time people loading pig iron into train cars.

   I encourage you to read:

   Strategy: A History By sir Lawrence Freedman

   For a more in depth discussion.

   [1] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Intro...

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2. johnamataDec 2022
   Various books on military science/history/geopolitics like Understanding Modern Warfare and Strategy (Lawrence Freedman), and books on Philosophy such as recently I'm reading books by Alvin Plantinga.

   I find that reading books from those genres makes me question things more, which I find is a good exercise towards becoming a better thinker and learning how to piece ideas from different areas together.

   For software, has got to be "Web Scalability for Startup Engineers" because it gave me a sweeping tour of most of today's software development, and various books on compiler development as building compilers taught me how to decompose things into smaller chunks.

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3. exdsqSep 2019
   I went to a talk by Lawrence Freedman [1] in Oxford where he discussed this war. He has a chapter dedicated to it in his book 'Strategy: A History' [2] (which I highly recommend).

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Freedman [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-History-Sir-Lawrence-Freed...

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4. jonbaerFeb 2019
   Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that explain everything about the world (Tim Marshall)

   The Feynman Processor (Gerard J. Milburn)

   Strategy: A History (Lawrence Freedman)

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5. dvtrnJan 2019
   Threadjack: if this sort of thing interest you, and want to hear other opines about strategy, tactics and their use through history, plus some modern anecdotes: I've been listening to and enjoying Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman on my commutes to work the last few weeks.

   https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-History-Lawrence-Freedman/dp...

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6. heuristDec 2018
   The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon. Really fantastic book about the changes in American society over the last two centuries. Argues that the impacts of new technology are decreasing over time.

   Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

   Genius Foods by Max Lugavere

   Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

   The Framers Coup by Michael Klarman

   Leadership by George MacGregor Burns

   Strategy by Lawrence Freedman

   Several books by Joseph Campbell or Peter Drucker. Can't go wrong with either.

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