Ter uma estratégia significa saber dizer "Não!"

Em Agosto de 2006 recomendei a leitura deste artigo "Strategy Means Saying "No"" de David Maister.
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Agora, depois do choque de 2007, com a ruptura dos modelos de negócio e mentais que vigoravam e, em plena re-calibração, a sua leitura é ainda mais importante.

"Finally, someone said out loud what was on everybody’s mind: “But do we have the courage to turn away business? Do we really have the confidence to tell paying customers that we are not right for them?”.
My answer? “Not only should you do that, but the only way you can achieve any strategic distinction is to do that. Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away.”"

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"The very essence of having a strategy is being selective about choosing the criteria on which a firm wishes to compete, and then being creative and disciplined in designing an operation that is finely tuned to deliver those particular virtues."

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"Staying focused and true to a strategy is something that has always been, and will always be, hard to do.
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The hunger for volume (and the use of managerial scorecards that emphasize it) has meant that many individuals and firms are often uncomfortable with (or even shocked by) the notion that, to achieve a distinctive strategy, they will need to turn away work that a major competitor might reasonably want to serve.
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“Oh, we don’t want to take it that far!” they say. “Our strategy is to emphasize certain things, not to exclude others. If a client opportunity comes along outside the strategic areas we have chosen, we’ll serve that client. We’re under too much fiscal pressure to turn away cash opportunities. Can’t we just develop a clear and crisp value proposition and then let the clients decide if they want to pay for it?”
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My answer is that (as I argued in my previous article “Strategy and the Fat Smoker”) you can’t get the benefits of a strategy that you don’t implement, and half-measures are unlikely to work. Strategy is not about understanding something—or planning to get around to it—it’s about having the courage to make it happen. You can’t let other people, even clients, determine the pace at which you create your distinctiveness."