Execution beats strategy every time

Execution eats strategy for breakfast... customers don't care about your fancy strategies and your five-year plan. They care about the product that's in their hands.

When you have great strategy, perfect strategy but poor execution, you don't win because your strategy never makes it to the market. And what's even worse is that you have learned nothing.

"This or do that" refers to typical PM activities like writing specs and conducting interviews, mentioned in their discussion about product management responsibilities.

It doesn't matter if you write a good, spec or you have a good interview or you do this or do that. What matters is that the product works.

Action is the first principle of business. You do stuff and my book is very oriented towards that. The idea was not to tell you what to do, but to give you guideposts while you're on that journey.