Good strategy is the effective application of your organization’s strengths against your rivals’ weaknesses. Unfortunately, many people misunderstand what makes good strategy and end up publishing vague statements of lofty but directionless goals instead of actionable, focused plans that will propel their organization to success.

Richard Rumelt is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on strategy, having guided organizations ranging from small, entrepreneurial start-ups to large, multinational conglomerates, as well as several governments and the U.S. Department of Defense. In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, he lays out the essential components of good strategy and the faulty thinking behind bad strategy. He also describes specific and measurable techniques for designing a focused strategy that gives your organization the best chance of success.

In Playing to Win, former CEO A.G. Lafley and consultant Roger Martin explain the steps for developing a successful business strategy. When the two worked together at Procter & Gamble, they used this approach to double the company's sales and market capitalization.

Their strategy involves answering five questions, each leading to the next like a cascading waterfall:

1. What is your company’s ideal future?
2. What are your target markets?
3. How will you succeed in those markets?
4. What capabilities does your company need in order to “win”?
5. How should you manage your company in order to “win”?

In this guide, we’ll examine each step of Lafley and Martin’s waterfall strategy, then discuss how to create a business plan that will help you dominate your chosen market. We’ll further enrich—and occasionally contrast—Lafley and Martin’s ideas with connections to other popular business guides such as Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game.

Do you have a complex problem you can’t seem to crack? According to strategy expert Richard Rumelt in The Crux, you have to first identify its core problem (which Rumelt refers to as “the crux”). From there, you can build a successful strategy that not only solves the problem, but also keeps you from getting bogged down by less important issues. The Crux is written for business leaders, strategists, and anyone facing complex challenges in their professional or personal life.

In our guide, we’ll explain what core problems are and how to identify them. We’ll also explain how to use your understanding of the core problem to devise a strategy for overcoming your broader issue, and we’ll detail Rumelt’s advice for implementing that strategy. In our commentary, we’ll add ideas about strategy from other experts, as well as more tips for putting Rumelt’s advice into action.

In This Is Marketing, entrepreneur and marketing expert Seth Godin challenges conventional marketing strategies. He argues that in today's media-saturated world, traditional marketing techniques are no longer effective. Instead, Godin emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships with customers based on trust, authenticity, and empathy. Effective marketing, according to Godin, goes beyond mere sales and aims to bring about positive changes in people's lives.

In this guide, we’ll explain why Godin says old marketing techniques are no longer effective and outline his guiding principles for successful marketing in the modern age. We complement his suggestions with insights from his other books as well as those of other marketing experts such as Ryan Holiday (Perennial Seller), Byron Sharp (How Brands Grow), and Pat Flynn (Superfans).

If you have an idea to spread, Seth Godin believes you’re a marketer. All Marketers Are Liars offers a fresh take on marketing—one that focuses on connecting with your customer, rather than on catchy advertising jingles or gimmicks. Godin defines marketing as telling consumers a great story about your product, your political campaign, your job experience, or even just yourself. This book explores new marketing concepts that you can use to tell a better story in any area of your life.

In this guide, we’ll explore Godin’s ideas on marketing, authenticity, and telling a great story. We’ll also discuss how to understand your customer and common obstacles you’ll encounter in your marketing. Along the way, we’ll give context on his definitions and provide actionable tips from other marketing experts.

Good strategy is the effective application of your organization’s strengths against your rivals’ weaknesses. Unfortunately, many people misunderstand what makes good strategy and end up publishing vague statements of lofty but directionless goals instead of actionable, focused plans that will propel their organization to success.

Richard Rumelt is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on strategy, having guided organizations ranging from small, entrepreneurial start-ups to large, multinational conglomerates, as well as several governments and the U.S. Department of Defense. In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, he lays out the essential components of good strategy and the faulty thinking behind bad strategy. He also describes specific and measurable techniques for designing a focused strategy that gives your organization the best chance of success.

In This Is Marketing, entrepreneur and marketing expert Seth Godin challenges conventional marketing strategies. He argues that in today's media-saturated world, traditional marketing techniques are no longer effective. Instead, Godin emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships with customers based on trust, authenticity, and empathy. Effective marketing, according to Godin, goes beyond mere sales and aims to bring about positive changes in people's lives.

In this guide, we’ll explain why Godin says old marketing techniques are no longer effective and outline his guiding principles for successful marketing in the modern age. We complement his suggestions with insights from his other books as well as those of other marketing experts such as Ryan Holiday (Perennial Seller), Byron Sharp (How Brands Grow), and Pat Flynn (Superfans).

Do you feel like the job market is changing faster than ever? Does job stability seem like a thing of the past? In The Startup of You, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha argue that to build a successful career in the modern world, you must approach your career as if it were a startup company—something that’s always growing and adapting. By applying principles of entrepreneurship to your career, you can overcome unexpected career obstacles and react quickly to opportunities.

In this guide, you'll learn about the changes to modern work and how to approach your career as if it were a startup company using three entrepreneurship tactics. We’ll supplement Hoffman and Casnocha’s strategies with those of other business professionals and provide suggestions on how to apply their strategies to your career.

According to author and entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi, developing fulfilling and mutually beneficial professional relationships, or successfully networking is crucial to career success. Becoming a prolific networker will give you a reputation for having good people skills, making it easier for you to gain positions managing others. Likewise, if you already know and get on well with company leaders, they may choose to do business with you rather than people they don’t know.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi gives tips on building and maintaining a professional network. Learn how to network with people who can help you achieve your goals; how to use conferences to network; and how to use social media to get new contacts to come to you.

Decision-making skills play a key role in every part of life, from professional advancement to personal relationships. Therefore, the ability to pick the best options available can measurably improve your career, family life, and even happiness. But when you’re in the moment, it can be hard to know how to approach a major decision.

In our master guide to making better decisions, we’ll cover advice on decision-making from popular science and psychology authors like Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and Chip and Dan Heath (Decisive). We’ll arrange their views into concrete principles you can use to analyze a decision, approach it from an informed perspective, and make your decision objectively. We’ll also explain how each of these strategies helps to improve your decision-making process.

Every decision carries risk. We don’t always think in terms of risk, and maybe that’s why we’re prone to making irrational decisions. But what if we worked on keeping risk at the forefront of our minds?

Annie Duke discusses how her decades-long poker career helped her develop decision-making strategies based on the idea that all decisions are bets. Being immersed in the game enabled her to observe how people make decisions in a setting where every choice leads to a clear outcome—winning or losing money. That’s what a bet is: a decision with quantifiable risk. In our guide to Thinking in Bets, you’ll find out how to work around your biases, objectively evaluate your beliefs, learn from your past, and ultimately get better at making good decisions.

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world. In Principles: Life and Work, he shares the guiding principles powering his success and Bridgewater’s.

Principles is a manual for rational thinking. The main theme is that finding truth is the best way to make decisions, and that ego, emotion, and blind spots prevent you from discovering the truth. Dalio shares his major strategies to circumvent these weaknesses, including total receptivity, extreme honesty and transparency, productive conflict, and credibility-centered decision making.

In our Principles guide, you’ll learn how to get past your ego in pursuit of your goals, why you need other people to improve your probability of being right, and the five-step process for getting what you want out of life.