Download or read book Being Strategic written by Erika Andersen and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRATEGY? TACTICS? CONFUSED? How many times have you sat in a meeting and heard someone use the word “strategic?” As in: “We’re not being very strategic about X.” or “We need a strategic plan for project Y.” And, if your organization is like most, everyone in the meeting nods wisely, the meeting drones on, people endlessly debate how to approach the situation at hand, with – generally – no one the wiser as to what “strategic” really means. Next time, respond: “Being strategic means consistently making those core directional choices that will best move us toward our hoped-for future. Is this what we’re doing?” Everybody talks about strategy, but there is a big gap between discussing strategy, defining strategy and actually being strategic -- so you can accomplish something. This book helps you approach business—and life—strategically, explaining what strategy is, why it's important, and how to do it. Being Strategic offers you a step-by-step model and skills for strategic thought and action that are broadly applicable and thoroughly practical: • First, get clear about the problem you’re trying to solve • Then, figure out where you’re starting from • Now, imagine your “castle on the hill,” the future you want to create. • Identify the “trolls under the bridge”; the obstacles in your path • Next, outline the path to the castle: your core strategies and the tactics for implementing them. • Re-evaluate your strategy and your tactics as conditions change Framed around the story of 13th-century Welsh nobles building an actual castle, and weaving in dozens of real-life examples from her practice, which has helped restaurateur Danny Meyer and many others, noted consultant Erika Andersen offers a complete course in turning around a business, or a life.

Download or read book How to be Strategic written by Fred Pelard and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FT BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH 'A comprehensive, concise, and practical guide that will enable anyone, in any situation, to develop their strategic thinking' Tiffani Bova, Chief Growth Evangelist, Salesforce, WSJ bestselling author, Growth IQ 'A must read for everyone who ever deals with complex important challenges. There are many take-away gems here that will help you push through the knotty centre of hard-to-resolve problems. Highly recommended!', Richard Rumelt, author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy Being strategic is a critical skill. It enables you to solve problems on a day-to-day basis while also keeping an eye on the long term, anticipating opportunities and mitigating threats along the way. Fred Pelard has been teaching strategic thinking to executives at all levels at leading companies around the world for almost 20 years. How to Be Strategic is his accessible and thorough guide to strategic thinking in any situation. It contains 12 smartly illustrated, workable methodologies from leading experts like Eric Ries, Chan Kim, and Barbara Minto, and will help you find your own path to the right solution every time. 'A wonderful and inspirational look into wide-ranging frameworks and theories to spark new thinking and strategy' Tom Goodwin, author of Digital Darwinism and Head of Futures and Insight at Publicis Groupe 'Practical and comprehensive' Roeland Assenberg, Director, Strategy and Banking, Monitor Deloitte Netherlands

Download or read book Becoming a Strategic Leader written by Richard L. Hughes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive—the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership. In Becoming a Strategic Leader Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations. Based on CCL’s successful Developing the Strategic Leader Program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach—thinking, acting, and influencing.

Download or read book Making Great Strategy written by Glenn R. Carroll and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making strategy requires undertaking major—often irreversible—decisions aimed at long-term success in an uncertain future. All leaders must formulate a clear course of action, yet many lack confidence in their ability to think systematically about their strategy. They struggle to apply the abstract lessons offered by conventional approaches to strategic analysis to their unique contexts. Making Great Strategy resolves these challenges with a straightforward, readily applicable framework. Jesper B. Sørensen and Glenn R. Carroll show that one factor underlies all sustainably successful strategies: a logically coherent argument that connects resources, capabilities, and environmental conditions to desired outcomes. They introduce a system for formulating and managing strategy through a set of three core activities: visualization, formalization and logic, and constructive argumentation. These activities can be implemented in any organization and are illustrated through examples and case studies from well-known companies such as Apple, Walmart, and The Economist. This book shows that while great strategic thinking is hard, it is not a mystery. Widely applicable and relevant for managers and leaders at all levels, especially executive teams charged with setting the course of their organizations, it is essential reading for anyone faced with practical problems of strategic management.

Download or read book Your Strategy Needs a Strategy written by Martin Reeves and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You think you have a winning strategy. But do you? Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you aim to be big or fast? Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win—or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether? In a business environment that is changing faster and becoming more uncertain and complex almost by the day, it’s never been more important—or more difficult—to choose the right approach to strategy. In this book, The Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha offer a proven method to determine the strategy approach that is best for your company. They start by helping you assess your business environment—how unpredictable it is, how much power you have to change it, and how harsh it is—a critical component of getting strategy right. They show how existing strategy approaches sort into five categories—Be Big, Be Fast, Be First, Be the Orchestrator, or simply Be Viable—depending on the extent of predictability, malleability, and harshness. In-depth explanations of each of these approaches will provide critical insight to help you match your approach to strategy to your environment, determine when and how to execute each one, and avoid a potentially fatal mismatch. Addressing your most pressing strategic challenges, you’ll be able to answer questions such as: • What replaces planning when the annual cycle is obsolete? • When can we—and when should we—shape the game to our advantage? • How do we simultaneously implement different strategic approaches for different business units? • How do we manage the inherent contradictions in formulating and executing different strategies across multiple businesses and geographies? Until now, no book brings it all together and offers a practical tool for understanding which strategic approach to apply. Get started today.

Download or read book Be More Strategic in Business written by Diana Thomas and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you've ever been told to ‘be more strategic’ and wondered how to do it, this is the book for you.” —Marshall Goldsmith, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There Finalist, Business/Careers category, 2018 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest Strong leaders are those who successfully navigate a great shift: from tactical doer to strategic leader. Regardless of your industry, line of business, or sector, your organization desperately needs strategic leaders—those who are tuned in to the needs of the business, understand how their actions impact corporate objectives, and use data to make smart decisions. Whether leading a department or running a company, a strategic leader propels business performance. Stephen R. Covey famously portrayed a strategic leader as one who was able to climb a tree and tell everyone they were laboring in the wrong jungle. This book lets you start out on the jungle floor and build a ladder to give you that strategic view over the tops of the trees. You’ll learn how to:Show up strategicSet meaningful directionLeverage stakeholdersAchieve successMake a difference in the areas that matter You’ll learn from the personal career journeys of two authors who have taken very different career paths, yet come together to create a proven approach to understanding the big picture of what your organization is trying to accomplish, setting measurable goals, making smart decisions, and continually getting better at what you’re doing.

Download or read book Strategic Intuition written by William Duggan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How "Aha!" really happens. When do you get your best ideas? You probably answer "At night," or "In the shower," or "Stuck in traffic." You get a flash of insight. Things come together in your mind. You connect the dots. You say to yourself, "Aha! I see what to do." Brain science now reveals how these flashes of insight happen. It's a special form of intuition. We call it strategic intuition, because it gives you an idea for action-a strategy. Brain science tells us there are three kinds of intuition: ordinary, expert, and strategic. Ordinary intuition is just a feeling, a gut instinct. Expert intuition is snap judgments, when you instantly recognize something familiar, the way a tennis pro knows where the ball will go from the arc and speed of the opponent's racket. (Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this kind of intuition in Blink.) The third kind, strategic intuition, is not a vague feeling, like ordinary intuition. Strategic intuition is a clear thought. And it's not fast, like expert intuition. It's slow. That flash of insight you had last night might solve a problem that's been on your mind for a month. And it doesn't happen in familiar situations, like a tennis match. Strategic intuition works in new situations. That's when you need it most. Everyone knows you need creative thinking, or entrepreneurial thinking, or innovative thinking, or strategic thinking to succeed in the modern world. All these kinds of thinking happen through flashes of insight--strategic intuition. And now that we know how it works, you can learn to do it better. That's what this book is about. Over the past ten years, William Duggan has conducted pioneering research on strategic intuition and for the past three years has taught a popular course at Columbia Business School on the subject. He now gives us this eye-opening book that shows how strategic intuition lies at the heart of great achievements throughout human history: the scientific and computer revolutions, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, modern art, microfinance in poor countries, and more. Considering the achievements of people and organizations, from Bill Gates to Google, Copernicus to Martin Luther King, Picasso to Patton, you'll never think the same way about strategy again. Three kinds of strategic ideas apply to human achievement: * Strategic analysis, where you study the situation you face * Strategic intuition, where you get a creative idea for what to do * Strategic planning, where you work out the details of how to do it. There is no shortage of books about strategic analysis and strategic planning. This new book by William Duggan is the first full treatment of strategic intuition. It's the missing piece of the strategy puzzle that makes essential reading for anyone interested in achieving more in any field of human endeavor.

Download or read book Getting Your Way written by James M. Jasper and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Getting other people to do what we want is a useful skill for anyone. Whether you’re seeking a job, negotiating a deal, or angling for that big promotion, you’re engaged in strategic thought and action. In such moments, you imagine what might be going on in another person’s head and how they’ll react to what you do or say. At the same time, you also try to pick the best way to realize your goals, both with and without the other person’s cooperation. Getting Your Way teaches us how to win that game by offering a fuller understanding of how strategy works in the real world. As we all know, rules of strategy are regularly discovered and discussed in popular books for business executives, military leaders, and politicians. Those works with their trendy lists of pithy maxims and highly effective habits can help people avoid mistakes or even think anew about how to tackle their problems. But they are merely suggestive, as each situation we encounter in the real world is always more complex than anticipated, more challenging than we had hoped. James M. Jasper here shows us how to anticipate those problems before they actually occur—by recognizing the dilemmas all strategic players must negotiate, with each option accompanied by a long list of costs and risks. Considering everyday dilemmas in a broad range of familiar settings, from business and politics to love and war, Jasper explains how to envision your goals, how to make the first move, how to deal with threats, and how to employ strategies with greater confidence. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Rosa Parks, Hugo Chávez, and David Koresh all come into play in this smart and engaging book, one that helps us recognize and prepare for the many dilemmas inherent in any strategic action.

Download or read book Deep Dive written by Rich Horwath and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get competitive by learning to think strategically.The inability to set good strategy can sink a company¿and a leader¿s career. A recent Wall Street Journal study revealed that the most sought-after executive skill is strategic thinking, but only three out of ten managers have this skill set.Horwath explains the three keys to strategic thinking, breaks them down into simple, attainable skills, and gives you practical tools to apply them every day, providing managers with a clear path to mastery of the three disciplines: 1. Acumen¿generate critical insights through a step-by-step evaluation of your business and its environment2. Allocation¿focus your limited resources through strategic trade-offs 3. Action¿implement a system to guarantee effective execution of strategy at all levels of your organization Based on new research with senior executives from 150 companies and the author¿s experience as a thought-leading strategist, Deep Dive is the first book to focus on the most important level of strategy¿you. Armed with this knowledge and dozens of effective tools, you can become a truly strategic leader for your organization.--Rich Horwath is the president of the Strategic Thinking Institute, a former chief strategy officer, and professor of strategy at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. As a thought-leading strategist, he has worked with such giants as Adidas, Amgen, and Pfizer. He is the author of four books and more than fifty articles on strategic thinking and has been profiled in business publications around the world, including Investor¿s Business Daily.

Download or read book Strategic Business Partner written by Dana Gaines Robinson and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research clearly indicates that there is a strong need for the Human Resources (HR) function, and the people in it, to adopt a more strategic and business-linked approach. In one study business executives ranked the HR function as third, after sales and customer service, as a function that makes a very significant contribution to a company's bottom line. Unfortunately research also indicates that few HR functions have become strategic. Most still operate in a primarily administrative and tactical manner—the very work that is increasingly being outsourced. Clearly there is a gap between what business leaders and employees need from their HR departments and what HR is providing. HR functions must become more integrated into the business, with some people on the HR team assuming the role of Strategic Business Partner (SBP). Here, Dana and Jim Robinson offer guidance for HR, Organization Development and Learning professionals who aspire to transform themselves into effective Strategic Business Partners. They explain how SBPs build partnerships, based upon credibility and trust, with key organization leaders. These partnerships provide SBPs with opportunities to identify and support projects directly aligned with business goals. The success of these projects deepens the SBPs' credibility, enabling them to be viewed as strategic partners. At this higher level of accountability, SBPs work with business leaders to form long-range business strategies and plans, creating and implementing people initiatives that link into and support the business strategies and plans. This practical guide offers case studies, exercises, tips, and tools you can use to become a Strategic Business Partner in your organization.

Download or read book Strategic Theory for the 21st Century The Little Book on Big Strategy written by Harry R. Yarger and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Playing to Win written by Alan G. Lafley and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

Download or read book Being Strategic written by Erika Andersen and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRATEGY? TACTICS? CONFUSED? How many times have you sat in a meeting and heard someone use the word "strategic?" As in: "We're not being very strategic about X." or "We need a strategic plan for project Y." And, if your organization is like most, everyone in the meeting nods wisely, the meeting drones on, people endlessly debate how to approach the situation at hand, with – generally – no one the wiser as to what "strategic" really means. Next time, respond: "Being strategic means consistently making those core directional choices that will best move us toward our hoped-for future. Is this what we're doing?" Everybody talks about strategy, but there is a big gap between discussing strategy, defining strategy and actually being strategic -- so you can accomplish something. This book helps you approach business—and life—strategically, explaining what strategy is, why it's important, and how to do it. Being Strategic offers you a step-by-step model and skills for strategic thought and action that are broadly applicable and thoroughly practical: • First, get clear about the problem you're trying to solve • Then, figure out where you're starting from • Now, imagine your "castle on the hill," the future you want to create. • Identify the "trolls under the bridge"; the obstacles in your path • Next, outline the path to the castle: your core strategies and the tactics for implementing them. • Re-evaluate your strategy and your tactics as conditions change Framed around the story of 13th-century Welsh nobles building an actual castle, and weaving in dozens of real-life examples from her practice, which has helped restaurateur Danny Meyer and many others, noted consultant Erika Andersen offers a complete course in turning around a business, or a life.

Download or read book Strategic Writing written by Deborah Dean and published by National Council of Teachers of English (Ncte). This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For this revised edition, Dean worked with high school teachers to refine, reorganize, and update the material to better support classroom teachers dedicated to teaching not just the process of writing but also the strategies that help students learn to write effectively throughout their lives. Deborah Dean is back with a significantly reenvisioned and revised edition of her popular Strategic Writing. After working with high school teachers who implemented the approach detailed in the first edition, Dean has refined, reorganized, and updated the material to better support classroom teachers dedicated to teaching not just the process of writing but also the strategies of writing that help students develop the ability to write effectively throughout their lives. Most of the changes were prompted by the desire to help teachers better understand an overall strategic approach that can counter the testing climate that pervades many schools. This approach works within a workshop model and uses the writing process as an umbrella framework. In addition to providing engaging and practical classroom activities, this new edition offers (1) explicit strategy talk, with lesson plans that differentiate between strategy, activity, and mini-lesson to further demonstrate how all three function in a strategic approach; (2) a focus on digital tools and genres, which have proliferated in the last ten years; (3) a more accessible organization, with the conceptual material in early, short chapters and the teaching ideas, examples of student work, and lesson plans in appendixes; and (4) grouping by types of strategies for better alignment with process than with rhetoric. As always, Dean considers students' out-of-school as well as in-school writing tasks, preparing them for a world in which writing is a critical skill, whether for school, work, information, or self-expression.

Download or read book Strategic Thinking in 3D written by Ross Harrison and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Effective strategic thinking requires a clear understanding of one's external environment. Each organization has a unique environment, but as Ross Harrison explains in Strategic Thinking in 3D, any environment-whether in the fields of national security, foreign policy, or business-has three dimensions: systems, opponents, and groups.

Download or read book Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving written by Arnaud Chevallier and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you are a student or a working professional, you can benefit from being better at solving the complex problems that come up in your life. Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving provides a general framework and the necessary tools to help you do so. Based on his groundbreaking course at Rice University, engineer and former strategy consultant Arnaud Chevallier provides practical ways to develop problem solving skills, such as investigating complex questions with issue maps, using logic to promote creativity, leveraging analogical thinking to approach unfamiliar problems, and managing diverse groups to foster innovation. This book breaks down the resolution process into four steps: 1) frame the problem (identifying what needs to be done), 2) diagnose it (identifying why there is a problem, or why it hasn't been solved yet), 3) identify and select potential solutions (identifying how to solve the problem), and 4) implement and monitor the solution (resolving the problem, the 'do'). For each of these four steps - the what, why, how, and do - this book explains techniques that promotes success and demonstrates how to apply them on a case study and in additional examples. The featured case study guides you through the resolution process, illustrates how these concepts apply, and creates a concrete image to facilitate recollection. Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving is a tool kit that integrates knowledge based on both theoretical and empirical evidence from many disciplines, and explains it in accessible terms. As the book guides you through the various stages of solving complex problems, it also provides useful templates so that you can easily apply these approaches to your own personal projects. With this book, you don't just learn about problem solving, but how to actually do it.

Download or read book Leading with Strategic Thinking written by Aaron K. Olson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be a more effective leader with strategic thinking Leading with Strategic Thinking reveals what effective leaders do differently. Eschewing the one-size-fits-all leadership model, this helpful guide outlines four general leadership types and demonstrates how each type achieves success – whether through personal vision, structured process, collaboration, or by empowering others. The authors identify the actions and skills that distinguish strategic leadership, drawn from interviews and focus groups with over three hundred leaders from around the world. Examples and case studies illustrate these concepts in action, and the provided reference materials steer readers toward more advanced information on this important topic. The disruptive forces of technology and globalization raise new challenges for leaders. This book is a manual that will help executives and aspiring leaders harness these forces and address the two central questions of strategic leadership: How do the best leaders develop their strategy? How do effective leaders drive strategic change? Becoming a strategic leader isn’t about mimicking an icon. The most effective leaders seize opportunity in a way that consciously integrates environmental requirements, stakeholder expectations, and personal ability. Leading with Strategic Thinking shows what these leaders do, and gives anyone the tools to be a more strategic leader.