39 Inspiring Strategy Quotes From Iconic Business Leaders

July 9, 2020 | Sean Foo

Strategy is a series of planned actions to achieve a long-term goal.

From having a vision to execution, strategy requires a single-minded focus to achieve the goals set originally!

From Jack Welch to Jeff Bezos, countless leaders have used strategy to succeed in their businesses.

To learn how they did it, here are 39 inspiring strategy quotes from these business leaders covering the various aspects of strategy!

Having Vision And Long-Term Planning

1. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric

2. “A leader should be visionary and have more foresight than an employee.” – Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

3. “I’m here to build something for the long-term. Anything else is a distraction.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

4. “When you expect things to happen – strangely enough – they do happen.” – J. P. Morgan

Importance Of Specialization

5. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” – Michael Porter, Harvard Business School Professor

6. “You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets.” – Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric

7. “The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.” – Andrew Carnegie, Founder of Carnegie Corporation

8. “You can only do so many things great. Cast aside everything else.” – Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

9. “Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.” – Jim Collins, Author of Good To Great

Focusing On The Consumer

10. “The best marketing strategy ever: Care.” – Gary Vaynerchuck, Chairman of VaynerX

11. “Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers.” – Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

12. “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

On Taking Risks In Strategy

13. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller, Founder of Standard Oil Company

14. “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks

15. “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. ” – Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

16. “I like to take risks. That’s how I make money. But they are calculated risks.” – Kevin O’Leary, Founder of The Learning Company

17. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

Communicating With Your Organization For Success

18. “Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a ‘nervous system’, to coordinate its actions” – Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

19. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” – Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn

20. “People want guidance, not rhetoric; they need to know what the plan of action is and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and the authority to act on it.” – Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks

21. “If we win the hearts and minds of employees, we’re going to have better business success.” – Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors

22. “The result of bad communication is a disconnection between strategy and execution.” – Chuck Martin, Former Vice President IBM

The Execution Of Strategy

23. “A strategy, even a great one, doesn’t implement itself” – Jeroen De Flander, Author of The Art Of Performance

24. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” – Stephen Case, CEO of American Online

25. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” – Michael Dell, CEO of Dell

26. “Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation, but from flawless execution.” – Naveen Jain, CEO of Infospace

27. “Vision without execution is hallucination.” – Thomas Edison, Co-Founder of General Electric

28. “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” – Herb Kelleher, Co-Founder of Southwest Airlines

29. “Good business planning is 9 parts execution for every 1 part strategy.” – Tim Berry – Founder of Palo Alto Software

30. “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” – Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric

Having Flexibility

31. “You have to be very nimble and very open minded. Your success is going to be very dependent on how you adapt.” – Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp

32. “Let’s execute along this strategy, but know that we’ll probably get some of this wrong, so be open to changing it.” – A.G. Lafley, Former CEO of P&G

33. “You must always be able to predict what’s next and then have the flexibility to evolve.” – Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce

34. “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

Persistence, Hard Work, And Strategy

35. “Patience is a key element of success.” – Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

36. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

37. “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow is worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” – Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

38. “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.” – Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald’s Corp

39. “I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” – John D. Rockefeller, Founder of Standard Oil Company