However you define success it tends to be accompanied by a set of qualities with the most commonly identified ones being intelligence and self-control.To date researchers have failed to identify how to permanently increase intelligence, but they have discovered, or at least rediscovered, how to improve self-control.

Most of our major problems, personal, social and business, can be ascribed to a failure of self-control: compulsive spending and borrowing, impulsive violence, underachievement, procrastination at work, alcohol and drug abuse, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, chronic anxiety, explosive anger and more.

A lack of self-control can cost you the US Open, as Serena Williams' tantrum in 2009 demonstrated; it can destroy your career, as adulterous American politicians keep discovering. It contributed to the epidemic of risky loans and investments that devastated the financial system and to the terrifying prospects for so many people who failed to set aside enough money for their old age.

Ask people to name their greatest personal strength and self-control comes in dead last as shown by a study of more than 1 million people around the world. Conversely, when asked about their failings, lack of self-control was at the top of the list.

Find out more.  _Willpower - Rediscovering  our greatest strength, Baumeister & Tierney_

The title sums up a central concept in Rumelt's approach - there is good strategy and bad strategy. And the absence of a good strategy is not neutral strategy, it is bad strategy.

Prof Rumelt teaches at UCLA and was described by McKinsey Quarterly as "Strategy's Strategist." He mixes in very heady circles working with the highest levels in the American military, government and international business. The book includes descriptions of his conversations with Steve Jobs about Apple's turnaround, with Jacques Nasser on Ford's brands and profits, and Shell's scenario planning guru, Pierre Wack.

It is commonplace for business leaders to equate platitudinous values with strategy: "We will be the leader in quality, delivery and customer relations." Equally, buzzwords and motivational slogans are confused with strategy, but so is the hope-filled pursuit of "big, hairy, audacious" financial goals. Rumelt argues cogently and demonstrates convincingly that these are not strategies, and by being mistaken for strategies they are at once unhelpful and misleading.

Not to be missed. _Good Strategy, Bad Strategy_ by Richard Rumelt

WHERE AND WHEN

Michelangelo Hotel, Sandton Square,

WEDNESDAY 7th March, 7:45 a.m. to to 8:45 a.m.

Please confirm your attendance or non-attendance by replying to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by calling 011 788-8903

Note: We charge you only what we are charged by the Hotel - which is now R 220.00 inclusive, so invoices are raised on your confirmation of attendance.

We look forward to seeing you,

Ian Mann