Very Interesting

On why quitters win.

At the heart of strategic thinking is the ability to focus on one strategy while consciously quitting the pursuit of others. Choosing what we want to do is easy. It's choosing what else we want to do that we are nonetheless going to quit doing that is the hard part—to build the school by stripping funding from the hospital; to develop this product while shutting down production of that one. As David Packard (of Hewlett-Packard fame) once said “more companies die from overeating than starvation.” The same truth applies to our careers and personal lives.

I also particularly like their observation about RSVPing:

University of Michigan psychologist Georges Potworowski has discovered that people who score low on many of these same traits are also more prone to indecisiveness. For example, let’s imagine your friend Paul is having a party. Paul’s more indecisive friends (not you, of course) probably won’t RSVP because they are afraid that the second they respond “yes,” Peter or Mary will announce an even cooler party on the same day (the horror!). But they don’t want to respond “no” either, since Paul’s party might turn out to be the cat’s meow after all. But really, who cares? Although failing to RSVP like I often do might send extra conscientious people like my wife to an early grave due to unmitigated frustration, in the grand scheme of things it isn’t a big deal, is it? No, if all we are talking about is a cocktail party with unconditionally loving friends. But the inability to make what Harvard ethics professor, Joseph Badaracco calls “right vs. right” decisions can be a fatal strategic flaw. An otherwise talented manager who can’t bring himself to focus on one customer segment at the expense of others (but what if they want to buy, too!?!) winds up taking his team in circles, and his career into a rut.