Success hinges more on obsessive follow-through than a theoretically perfect strategy. This is achieved through clear, cascaded objectives for every employee and rigorous, regular performance monitoring to ensure accountability.

Instead of scaling his ad agency, the founder saw that one client, Ridge, had more potential than the rest combined. He folded his agency's operations and team into Ridge in exchange for equity, transitioning from a service provider to an operator focused on a single, high-growth asset.

Strong, cash-rich businesses often become unfocused and bloated, tolerating poor decisions that would bankrupt lesser firms. ValueAct Capital calls this the 'disease of abundance,' which they aim to cure by refocusing management on core strengths.

Blockworks shut its news division not just for focus, but because it couldn't give the journalists the top-level attention they deserved. Keeping a deprioritized unit starves its talented employees of resources and opportunity, making it better to let them go where they can be a primary focus.

Goldman Sachs is divesting consumer-facing businesses like Marcus and its credit card to refocus on high-margin corporate advisory. Its stock is at an all-time high, validating a strategy where earning a small percentage (e.g., 0.2%) on multi-billion dollar transactions is far more profitable than serving millions of smaller retail customers.

Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc believes superior execution of a good strategy is better than a brilliant one with poor follow-through. Her method involves cascading clear objectives to every employee, conducting relentless performance reviews, and embedding customer feedback at the highest levels to ensure actions consistently align with stated goals.

Corporate leaders are incentivized and wired to pursue growth through acquisition, constantly getting bigger. However, they consistently fail at the strategically crucial, but less glamorous, task of divesting assets at the right time, often holding on until value has significantly eroded.

Blanc's successful turnaround of Aviva began by divesting eight businesses where they lacked a top-three market position. This freed up capital, reduced debt, and allowed the core, high-scale operations in the UK, Ireland, and Canada to shine, proving that focused scale beats broad but shallow market presence.

Contrary to the trend of specialized 'monoline' companies, Aviva's CEO asserts that diversification offers significant capital benefits. It also allows for the efficient scaling of major investments, like generative AI, across numerous product lines—a strategy that has proven more resilient and successful over the last five years.