We like very much the summary of the common errors on business strategies from the book Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. By A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

The Economist magazine today helps give a succint notes of these common strategy errors:
 

• The Do-It-All strategy- No choice, no priorities.
• The Don Quixote strategy-  Attacks the company’s strongest competitor first like a fool.
• The Waterloo strategy- War on too many fronts at once.
• The Something-For-Everyone- Tries to capture every sort of customer at once.
• The Programme-Of-The-Month-The populist approach, pursuing whatever fashionable in an industry as a strategy.
• The Dreams-That-Never-Come-True strategy- Never translates ambitious mission statements into clear choices about which markets to compete in and how to win in them.

Business leaders are tasked to make their strategies work and avoid these common errors. That may be easy to say than done. For new business, we’ve seen so many easily falling into the above categories. We all need keep in mind and keep practicing.  And then, most importantly: “no strategy lasts forever”.