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5 He’s right. “Strategy,” as it is sold by consulting firms, is essentially a pipe dream. Why? Because you can sit in a boardroom and plot all you’d like, but once the game has started, it’s pretty much improvisation from that point forth. (The Firm – Duff McDonald, 2013 p. 112) THE FIRM THE STORY OF McKINSEY

6 The best companies stay efficient and effective, and they do well because their people are trained to do their jobs. The hardest thing in any big organization is to keep execution discipline in the forefront. There is a huge usefulness to that kind of consulting-process improvement-versus the elusive promise of big breakthrough thinking. The idea that executives need to be smart and heroic is a new invention. The essence of efficient management is hiring and training unheroic, ordinary people to play by certain rules. You need to take care of that before trying to create leaders or heroes. (The Firm – Duff McDonald, 2013 p ) THE FIRM THE STORY OF McKINSEY

7 Although he was one of the firm’s first champions of a strategy practice, Ohmae became famous for his later repudiation of the idea of formal corporate strategy-arguing a variant of Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke’s dictum that all strategic plans become nullified on first contact with the enemy. By definition, you improvise in battle, and he who improvises best wins. (The Firm – Duff McDonald, 2013 p. 140) THE FIRM THE STORY OF McKINSEY

8 The only point of strategic planning is to think through all contingencies in advance so as to make fewer tactical execution errors; he who makes the fewest and has the best-organized and best-trained troops wins. (The Firm – Duff McDonald, 2013 p. 186) THE FIRM THE STORY OF McKINSEY

CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAM DEVELOPED BY: 9 Contact Us Randall McCathren COO, Auction Academy (615) Penny Wanna Administrator, Auction Academy (615)