Strategy quotes are great to spice-up your presentations. Here's a list of 54 strategy and strategy execution quotes you can use. Check out more at jeroen-de-flander.com

1. Jeroen De Flander – strategy quotes update PDF 1
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Strategy Quotes: my top 10
Strategy Quote #1. “Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions” —Henry Mintzberg
Strategy Quote #2. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” —Michael Porter
Strategy Quote #3. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” —Decca
Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles 1962
Strategy Quote #4. “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” —
Miyamoto Musashi, legendary Japanese swordsman
Strategy Quote #5. “Corporate Social Responsibility should be more than coloring your
annual report green and giving a bag of money to your favorite charity in return for some
nice pictures” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Quote #6. “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without
strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist
Strategy Quote #7. “Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your
thinking” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Quote #8. ”You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you
cannot go south at the same time.” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Quote #9. ”Like strategy, innovation is a cool word. Put strategy and innovation in
a single phrase and a strategy tourist starts drooling.” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Quote #10. “Don’t fool yourself: having a strategy map is not the same as having a
strategy” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Execution quotes: my top 10
Strategy Execution Quote #1. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look
at the results” – Sir Winston Churchill
Strategy Execution Quote #2. “Execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that
companies need to master in order to have competitive advantage. It’s a discipline of its
own” —Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy, Execution

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Strategy Execution Quote #3. “From Good to Great is nice, but knowing when great is good
enough is even better.” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Execution Quote #4. “Strategy Execution isn’t something other people should
worry about while you are doing something far more important” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Execution Quote #5. “If companies would invest as much time in their strategy
cascade as they do in their budgeting process, most would perform a lot better” —Jeroen
De Flander
Strategy Execution Quote #5. “In many organizations, budget is king. It’s like the Amazon,
the source of life. The strategy process is more like a small stream that meanders slowly
through the organization (and if you’re unlucky, the water doesn’t flow at all and starts to
smell).” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy Execution Quote #6. “Strategy Execution is the responsibility that makes or breaks
executives” —Alan Branche and Sam Bodley-Scott, Implementation
Strategy Execution Quote #7. “A strategy, even a great one, doesn’t implement itself”
Strategy Execution Quote #8 “Persistence is what makes the impossible possible, the
possible likely, and the likely definite” —Robert Half
Strategy Execution Quote #9. “Just because someone said yes to you doesn’t mean
something is going to happen. Most of the yeses we get are noes in disguise” —Jeroen De
Flander
Strategy Execution Quote #10. “Don’t measure your performance by what you have
accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished within your capabilities” —
Jeroen De Flander
Strategy quotes / strategy execution quotes: the best of the rest
21. “Don’t go for small commitments on big things, but aim for big commitments on small
things” —Jeroen De Flander
22. “Dear Executives, execution commitment is not for sale. You have to earn it” —Jeroen
De Flander
23. In a crisis: “A previously approved strategy could very well be less realistic today, due
to reduced execution capacity in your organization.” —Jeroen De Flander
24. “Dear CEO, when you get tired of telling the strategy storyline, you have reached three
percent of your target population” —Jeroen De Flander
25. “Most of us know the marketing concept of good communication. To make a message
stick in the head of a future consumer, you need to deliver the message seven times using

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seven different channels. Why do executives think that to make a strategy stick, a boring
speech delivered once will be enough?” —Jeroen De Flander
26. “In a 4×100-metre relay race, one runner starts before the other, but in the end it’s the
sum of the four runners that determines performance” —Jeroen De Flander
27.“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” —
Peter Drucker
28. “What’s the use of measuring speed if you don’t go in the right direction” —Jeroen De
Flander
29. “A Balanced Scorecard helps turn parrots – people who just repeat what they have
heard – into ambassadors – people who understand the what and why and can reason
decisions with others” —Jeroen De Flander
30. “If you have too many rear view mirrors , it will be very difficult to see the road
ahead” —Jeroen De Flander
31. “Budgets are like oil tankers – they need time to change course. You don’t want to be
left standing on the deck of your oil tanker, watching all the opportunities pass you by
unable to stop and turn to chase after them.”
32. “Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent
alignment” —Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last
33. “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”
—Thomas Timings Holme
34. “Body language can’t save you when someone is reading your strategy document” —
Jeroen De Flander
35. “When building a new strategy, don’t ever let people seduce you with the line, ‘But
that’s always been budgeted for’.” —Jeroen De Flander
36. “The best time to make up your mind about people is never” —Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
37. “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” —Albert Einstein
38. “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may
speak” —Hans Hoffmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap
39. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” —Leonardo Da Vinci

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40. “You can have anything you want – you just can’t have everything you want” —
Anonymous
41. “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” —
Peter Drucker
42. “Initiative prioritization doesn’t mean distributing all available resources to all known
projects” —Volker Voigt
43. “Strategy Execution is all about realizing the full potential of your strategy – and not
limiting yourself to only 50, 60 or 70 percent” —Jeroen De Flander
44. “I have never seen a successful project run by a bad project manager”
45. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is
the ultimate competitive advantage” —Jack Welch
46. “Developing people in a classroom is a cost. It becomes an investment when they start
applying what they learnt on-the-job. It only becomes a success the moment it has a
positive impact on (performance) what the job actually needs to achieve” —Jeroen De
Flander
47. “In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are” —
Arnold H. Glasgow
48. “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” —Denis Watley
49. “No goal commitment equals no performance, whatever else you try” —Jeroen De
Flander
50. “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” —Peter Senge
51. “Real commitment means doing everything in your power to get things done.” —Jeroen
De Flander
52. “Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a
‘nervous system’, to coordinate its actions” —Bill Gates, co-founder Microsoft
53. “The result of bad communication is a disconnection between strategy and
execution” —Chuck Martin, former Vice President IBM

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54. “Look beyond the send button and shift your focus to the receiving end”
Do you have strategy quotes of execution quotes that you like to see on the list? Drop me a line.

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About the author: Jeroen De Flander is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on
strategy execution and a highly regarded keynote speaker. He has shared the stage with
prominent strategists like Michael Porter and reached out to 21,000+ leaders in 30+ countries.
His first book Strategy Execution Heroes reached the Amazon bestseller list in 5 countries and
was nominated for Management Book of the Year 2012 in the Netherlands. His new book is
called The Execution Shortcut.
“De Flander’s latest book charts a strategy for taking any idea off the drawing board and into real
life. A great help to anyone looking to bring a good idea into the real world.”
Kirkus Reviews
"De Flander has added another chapter to the emerging science of strategy execution."
Prof. Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School & Dr David Norton
"This book explains in an engaging way how Just Do It's don’t come automatically. It only happens when
the mind is triggered, the heart inspired, and willpower strengthened."
Bert Stevens, Vice President Europe Operations, Nike