A Quote by Stephen Covey

Most leaders would agree that they’d be better off having an average strategy with superb execution than a superb strategy with poor execution. Those who execute always have the upper hand.

Stephen Covey

Quote Topics

Agree Always Average Better Better Off Execute Execution Hand Having Leaders Most Off Poor Strategy Superb Than Those Upper Upper Hand Would

Quote Author

Stephen Covey
American - Educator
October 24, 1932 - July 16, 2012

Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.

Stephen Covey

My view is that, as management, the focus has to be on having a strategy and executing it. As you do the strategy and execution, it is important to communicate it consistently.

Uday Kotak

Doing the right thing is important, which is where strategy comes in. But doing that thing well—execution—is what sets companies apart. After all, every football play is designed to go for a huge gain. The reason it doesn’t is because of execution—people drop balls, miss blocks, go to the wrong place, and so forth. So, success depends on execution—on the ability to get things done.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Weak leadership can wreck the soundest strategy; forceful execution of even a poor plan can often bring victory.

Sun Tzu

What got repressed-sometimes viciously repressed-by the strategy-concept makers, consultants, and data gatherers was a consciousness of people and their importance in the creation and execution of any strategy.

Walter Kiechel

The execution of strategy is over to the captain and coach, as it always has been. It's the right way to go. We need clear role allocations, the coach and the captain go and execute and my job is to plan for the future.

Andrew Strauss

One of the problems many leaders report is a gap between strategy and execution. Usually this "gap" arises because the so-called "strategy" is a set of financial performance goals, not an approach to overcoming challenges. The two key ways to narrow this gap are to avoid bad strategies that fail to explain how to proceed and to establish a proximate objective - something which can be accomplished and which will open the door to further progress.

Richard P. Rumelt

A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is. And lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you'll go out of business.

Bill Gates

After formulating and communicating the right strategy and optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly understand the big picture.

Mark V. Hurd

Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally, but they pay attention to details, every day.

Colin Powell

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

Peter Drucker

The result of bad communication is a disconnection between strategy and execution.

Chuck Martin

I think I governed effectively. I don't have any doubts about that. I had the benefit, when I was in office, of having an excellent relationship with the Republican Party. We had superb bipartisan support and we had the highest batting average of any president since the Second World War, except Lyndon Johnson. He had a little better average than I did.

Jimmy Carter

I always love that phrase, 'Oh, this is a good idea, but it's execution dependent.' As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent.

Ted Sarandos

The only thing better than a superb collection of spinechilling stories, is a superb collection of spinechilling stories accompanied by equally unsettling illustrations, and in that regard, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better example than IN MINT CONDITION: 2013. In reading it, I have discovered writers and artists previously unknown to me who are now very high on my radar, and they should be just as high on yours.