Chris C Fox Consulting

War is ninety percent information.

Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.

If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

Good strategy is unexpected.

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

Bad strategy flourishes because it floats above analysis, logic, and choice, held aloft by the hot hope that one can avoid dealing with these tricky fundamentals and the difficulties of mastering them. Not miscalculation.

An organisation’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

What's the use of running if you are not on the right road.

There is always a better strategy than the one you have; you just haven't thought of it yet.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.

Defeat the enemy's strategy.

Context is worth 80 IQ points.

We will never try to develop a strategy that wins on price. There is nothing unique about pricing.

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

After a business implements a strategy, competitors will react, and the firm’s strategy will need to adapt to meet the new challenges. There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle continues on perpetually. Produce and compete or perish.

Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Strategy isn't difficult. It's just a lot of work.

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment

A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does.

If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.

1500 years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago everybody knew the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago you thought people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice, there is.

One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

I can't promise that if things change they will get better. But I can promise that if they don't, they won't.

What do you want to achieve or avoid? The answers to this question are objectives. How will you go about achieving your desire results? The answer to this you can call strategy.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are.

So companies have to be very schizophrenic. On one hand, they have to maintain continuity of strategy. But they also have to be good at continuously improving.

We tend to think that, in a traditional organisation, people are producing results because management wants results, but the essence of a high-quality organisation is people producing results because they want the results. It’s puzzling we find that hard to understand, that if people are really enjoying, they’ll innovate, they’ll take risks, they’ll have trust with one another because they are really committed to what they’re doing and it’s fun.

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.

Strategy 101 is about choices: You can't be all things to all people.

The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.

All too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own

The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

What gets measured gets managed.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

The purpose of a system is what it does. There is, after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Initiative prioritisation doesn’t mean distributing all available resources to all known projects.

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Make it work, make it right, make it fast.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your thinking