Richard Rumelt is a legendary strategy pioneer and author of The Crux and Good Strategy Bad Strategy. In this insightful episode, Richard dismantles traditional “strategic planning,” arguing it is often merely a financial budget masquerading as actual business strategy. He emphasizes that true strategy is problem-solving rooted in rigorous diagnosis. We will also discover how to identify the crux while breaking through unconscious constraints to achieve coherent, highly impactful, and addressable strategic organizational action.
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The Most Dangerous Game
In high school, I read the short story The Most Dangerous Game and found it extremely creepy. Even as an adult, I feel the same way. What redemptive message can a person of any age take from this flipped script of hunter to prey to (sorry, no spoilers)?
A Quick Recap
Imagine relaxing on a luxury yacht in the dead of night, puffing on a pipe, and chatting with your buddy about the thrill of the hunt. That’s how we meet Sanger Rainsford in The Most Dangerous Game. He’s not just any hunter, though—he’s an elite, cold-hearted expert who genuinely believes the world is divided into only two groups: the hunters and the hunted. He doesn’t give a single thought to how his prey feels. Talk about a major case of dramatic irony for what’s about to happen next.
Who cares how a jaguar feels?” “Perhaps the jaguar does,” observed Whitney. “Bah! They’ve no understanding.”
From Hunter to Prey
Elite big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford loses his footing and falls from his yacht into the sea, and he is plunged into a high-stakes survival situation, ultimately washing ashore on a small island.
There, he encounters General Zaroff, an intellectual and sophisticated aristocrat who appears to be a master of operations, hospitality, and resource management. But as the two men talk, Rainsford uncovers a horrifying strategic pivot: Zaroff has grown completely bored with hunting.
Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call ‘a sporting proposition.’ It had become too easy. I always got my quarry. Always. There is no greater bore than perfection.
In what may be a terrible business metaphor, what follows is a dark, psychological masterclass in competitive strategy, risk mitigation, and surviving a hostile market where the margins for error are zero.
3 Lessons I Learned From This Short Story
- Empathy Revisited: When I think of empathy, my mind immediately shifts to Atticus telling Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” I thought Rainsford was going to get this message. You’ll get the answer at the end.
- Deep intellect and morality can be two sides of the coin. Yes, this lesson is obvious, but the general was cultured, sophisticated, and intellectually gifted. Yet his mind was deeply and darkly twisted. Can we throw in psychopath, too?
- The fragility of our moral compass comes through loud and clear in this story, especially in the final scene with the hunted.
3 Business Corollaries in The Most Dangerous Game
I may be trying to pull too much from this short book, but several ideas popped into my head as I was reading this book recently:
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: My, how quickly the tables can turn. My favorite question to ask my clients is, “Will we be relevant in five years?” I love the answers I typically get because they are thoughtfully considered. The question should remain front and center at all times because success cannot continue infinitely.
- Agility, Adaptability, and Survival: Is the sky falling? Believe the impossible cannot be realized? Agility, Adaptability, and Survival: Is the sky falling? Believe the impossible cannot be realized? Rainsford didn’t have a chance, given his limited resources, while he was being hunted. Instead, he used his greatest asset: his mind.
- The Cost of Hubris: This may be my favorite takeaway. Be careful that confidence does not turn into arrogance, which can easily happen. Will you suffer the same fate as the general? Hopefully not.
Book Pairings
As a reader, I like the concept of book pairings. In this case, my list is extremely short. If you like The Most Dangerous Game, read The Running Man by Stephen King (he wrote the book under a different pen name when it was published). In this fast-paced dystopian thriller, a desperate working-class man joins a deadly televised game show to save his sick family, igniting a nationwide rebellion while dodging professional assassins in an ultimate survival adrenaline rush.
The Coffee Can Investor
What if the smartest investing move was simply to stop selling? Author and former CBS News chief Neeraj Khemlani joins CFO Bookshelf alongside his friend and investment expert Matt Ankrum, CFA, to unpack The Coffee Can Investor—a book born from a $5 million gift to three daughters, a century-old coffee can, and one obsessive question: what do 100-bagger stocks have in common?
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Story Business
Gavin McMahon is an engineer by training who has worked across the defense, automotive, and publishing industries. He served as VP and Director of Web Strategy at Gartner and is now co-founder of Fassforward—a 25-year-old leadership and communication consultancy recognized on the Inc. 5000. All of their work, Gavin says, comes down to two things: leadership and storytelling. The double S in the name honors his business partner, Rose Fast.
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Hourly Billing is Nuts: With Jonathan Stark
Jonathan Stark is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts and host of the Ditching Hourly podcast. He has spent two decades helping independent consultants escape the trap of trading time for money. In this conversation, Jonathan breaks down why hourly billing structurally undermines knowledge workers and shares the mindset shifts and practical tools—value pricing, fixed-fee proposals, and access retainers—that can transform a professional services practice.
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Finding Value in Numbers
Most finance books recycle the same material. Finding Value in Numbers doesn’t. Mark Gandy sits down with author Ehsan Ehsani to unpack a book he calls his new favorite finance read with math—and he’s read nearly all of them. From ROIC adjustments to marginal investing frameworks, Ehsan brings fresh thinking to fundamental investing in a way that’s both intellectually rigorous and genuinely approachable.
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Would You Work for Chainsaw Al Dunlap?
Al Dunlap didn’t just cut costs — he cut everything. When he took over Sunbeam in 1996, he slashed 6,000 jobs, closed factories, and sent the stock soaring. Wall Street loved him. But behind the numbers was a fraud: cooked books, phantom sales, and a company quietly dying. By 1998, he was fired, banned by the SEC, and Sunbeam was bankrupt. Was he a turnaround genius or a corporate psychopath? My friend Gordon Graham joins me to find out.
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Sales Punks Who Bash Outdated Playbooks
Kyle Hegarty is a gifted, story-driven writer, best known for his first book, The Accidental Business Nomad. His newest book, Sales Punks, tackles the sales recession facing B2B teams and offers remedies for an outdated playbook. Kyle breaks down the difference between the seller’s journey and the buyer’s journey—and why that mindset shift is critical. You don’t need to work in sales to enjoy this one. Plus, Mark shares his seven all-time favorite sales books.
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Gimme a Crisis With Howard Green
One of the best business books I’ve read in the past five years is Railroader by Howard Green, and it’s easily in my Top 100 business reads of all time. Howard’s newest book is about another CEO who spent 43 years at Scotiabank, known as Canada’s most international financial institution. The CEO is Rick Waugh, and it is a perfect, very readable case study of leadership during a crisis and extreme economic challenges.
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The Bottomless Cup With Kevin Boehm
James Beard Award-winning restaurateur Kevin Boehm has opened 40 restaurants in his 30-year career, collaborating with top chefs while earning Michelin stars. His Boka Group is now one of the world’s most successful restaurant companies. Boehm’s journey has been complex, shaped by a turbulent family life and a shocking revelation about his father that drove him in the restaurant industry. There, he discovered the magic of hospitality and the thrill of a chaotic dining room.
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