Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach
Product ID: 15064113
Desertcart purchases this item on your behalf and handles shipping, customs, and support to OMAN.
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pressing strategic challenges, you’ll be able to answer questions such as: What replaces planning when the annual cycle is obsolete?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. Review: Five-star Great! For Orienting, Aligning, Thinking, Organizing, Integrating and Synthesizing Business Strategy - Bottom line: Reeves et al. have made a masterful contribution. The Strategy Palette will help business leaders match their strategic approaches to their business environments, and then up their game on an ongoing basis through "ambidextrous animation" of their world of possibilities. Effective strategy focuses and coordinates present, entrepreneurial decisions and actions, on an ongoing basis, to confer decisive purpose-serving advantages, within the business environment, as it may unfold. In formulating and executing strategy, business leaders and strategists benefit from aids to: • observing and perceiving; • thinking and organizing; • assessing and understanding; • analyzing and anticipating; and • deciding and acting. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote about strategy: "… consideration of all requires a rare grasp of mind. … It is the exact fulfillment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result. … Thus, … in strategy everything is very simple, but not … very easy." Authors Reeves, Haanaes and Sinha have eased several thinking and organizing challenges. They characterize business environments along three axes: Unpredictability Malleability and Harshness. A simplifying assumption of dichotomous conditions along the first two axes creates a 2x2 grid, with four matching approaches to strategy (clockwise from the origin): Classical, Adaptive, Shaping and Visionary. The fifth approach to strategy, Renewal, comes into play when conditions/developments threaten the viability of the business. Insofar as different business environments (e.g. industries, business models, distribution channels, etc.) exhibit varying degrees of predictability and malleability, the book's welcome simplification becomes a four-box rather than a nine-box (or worse). The supplemental notion that survival, via Renewal, takes precedence over the other approaches to strategy when, for example, resources become severely constrained, revenues plunge or cash flow goes negative, has common sense appeal. The authors provide empirical evidence and mathematical modeling results to support their Strategy Palette conclusions. They also make a good face validity case by mapping eighty-one different historical contributions to the field of business strategy formation onto one of their five approaches, without having to "pound any square pegs onto round holes". After developing and discussing the five approaches, chapter-by-chapter, the authors begin adding sophistication to deal with the many nuances that effective strategy must take into account. For example, different parts of the same business may be better served by different strategic approaches; preferred approaches may well change over time; and hybrid approaches make sense because four-box thinking only provides a first pass match of strategic approach to business environment. Reeves, et al. aptly this higher level of strategic approach as "Ambidextrous". In "Strategy Safari", Henry Mintzberg and his coauthors reviewed "Ten Schools of Strategy" and then similarly concluded: "Should strategists pick and choose from among all these ideas, like diners at a buffet table, or should they try to combine them into palatable dishes as chefs do back in the kitchen? … the answer has to be yes, both times. Every Strategy process has to combine various aspects of the different schools." In their highest level of application, which they refer to as "animating" the Strategy Palette, authors: Reeves, Haanaes and Sinha identify and describe eight leadership roles which mirror their given names: "diagnostician, segmenter, disruptor, team coach, salesperson, inquisitor, antenna and accelerator". When business leaders assume such roles, at opportune times, they inevitably find ways upgrade their ongoing strategic process. Integration and synthesis became strategic essentials more than a decade ago. Strategy is not "deliberate" or "emergent", but both, in thoughtful orchestration, over time. By mapping eighty-one strategy paradigms onto the five approaches of the Strategy Palette, "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" demonstrates its integrative appeal; and, by fostering "ambidexterity" and "animation", Reeves et al. have given their readers a well developed collection of synthesizing behaviors. As someone who has taken a keen interest in business strategy for over forty years ─ as student, teacher, practitioner, business leader and strategic advisor ─ I delight in giving "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" my five-star rating. Review: An excellent overview of the field of strategy, some uncertainty regarding the value and novelty of the concept of ambidexterity - Reading Reeves et al.’s book “Your strategy needs a strategy” could be done with two distinct starting points: i) this book is an overview of main strains of thought in business strategy; or ii) it adds something in addition to same in the form of a meta-layer centered around the concept of ambidexterity. Starting with (i), this books could be seen as an excellent, though somewhat introductory overview of the field of business strategy, from strategic planning, to adaptive strategies, to visionary strategies, to shaping / platform strategies, and to renewal. My guess is indeed that that this book will be recommended reading at many leading business schools worldwide for this exact reason, and especially as it links various strands of strategic thinking together, and as it predicts winning strategies in any industry from industry fundamentals in the form of predictability, malleability, and harshness (pp. 6-7). Moving on to (ii), the book adds a dimension to current art by emphasizing the value generation by being strategically ambidextrous, or being able to “combine different, potentially opposed strategic approaches to thrive in the long run”. According to the authors’, the most ambidextrous companies outperformed the market by 10-15% of total shareholder return on average between 2006-2011, so this is clearly a value-generating concept (p. 177). There are two issues here: a) The book has no explicit notion of business unit strategy, as opposed to corporate strategy, to the extent that such distinction is meaningful for today’s organizational forms. However, it seems that ambidexterity is primarily a corporate-level concept. It would then have been of interest to explore more in depth why the difference in outcome can be explained specifically by ambidexterity (as explained in this book) and not for example by managing various business units in a portfolio manner (using for example BCG’s growth-share matrix) or based on traditional synergy-based approaches. b) For those of us who believe that superior shareholder returns are fundamentally generated at business unit level, the claim of 10-15% out-performance attributable to ambidexterity (and not to say good business unit-level strategies and execution) seems intriguing, but speculative. The book has an interesting approach to quantifying the value of various strategic approaches in various environment, based on BCG’s multi-armed bandit (MAB) simulation model. I guess the charts in the book with profitability as function of time for various generic strategic approaches confirm what most of us could have qualitatively sketched on the back of an envelope, but for the mathematically inclined it feels good to see that the profitability of a generic strategic approach may be modeled in a mathematically stringent way. On the other hand, the book is weak on conflict / competition, which, in addition to uncertainty and optionality, is besides what separates business strategy from business planning. The book ends with solid lists of references / recommendations for further reading and notes. In conclusion, an extremely good read for your summer vacation!
| Best Sellers Rank | #722,950 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #641 in Strategy & Competition #1,227 in Strategic Business Planning #1,403 in Systems & Planning |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 306 Reviews |
R**E
Five-star Great! For Orienting, Aligning, Thinking, Organizing, Integrating and Synthesizing Business Strategy
Bottom line: Reeves et al. have made a masterful contribution. The Strategy Palette will help business leaders match their strategic approaches to their business environments, and then up their game on an ongoing basis through "ambidextrous animation" of their world of possibilities. Effective strategy focuses and coordinates present, entrepreneurial decisions and actions, on an ongoing basis, to confer decisive purpose-serving advantages, within the business environment, as it may unfold. In formulating and executing strategy, business leaders and strategists benefit from aids to: • observing and perceiving; • thinking and organizing; • assessing and understanding; • analyzing and anticipating; and • deciding and acting. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote about strategy: "… consideration of all requires a rare grasp of mind. … It is the exact fulfillment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result. … Thus, … in strategy everything is very simple, but not … very easy." Authors Reeves, Haanaes and Sinha have eased several thinking and organizing challenges. They characterize business environments along three axes: Unpredictability Malleability and Harshness. A simplifying assumption of dichotomous conditions along the first two axes creates a 2x2 grid, with four matching approaches to strategy (clockwise from the origin): Classical, Adaptive, Shaping and Visionary. The fifth approach to strategy, Renewal, comes into play when conditions/developments threaten the viability of the business. Insofar as different business environments (e.g. industries, business models, distribution channels, etc.) exhibit varying degrees of predictability and malleability, the book's welcome simplification becomes a four-box rather than a nine-box (or worse). The supplemental notion that survival, via Renewal, takes precedence over the other approaches to strategy when, for example, resources become severely constrained, revenues plunge or cash flow goes negative, has common sense appeal. The authors provide empirical evidence and mathematical modeling results to support their Strategy Palette conclusions. They also make a good face validity case by mapping eighty-one different historical contributions to the field of business strategy formation onto one of their five approaches, without having to "pound any square pegs onto round holes". After developing and discussing the five approaches, chapter-by-chapter, the authors begin adding sophistication to deal with the many nuances that effective strategy must take into account. For example, different parts of the same business may be better served by different strategic approaches; preferred approaches may well change over time; and hybrid approaches make sense because four-box thinking only provides a first pass match of strategic approach to business environment. Reeves, et al. aptly this higher level of strategic approach as "Ambidextrous". In "Strategy Safari", Henry Mintzberg and his coauthors reviewed "Ten Schools of Strategy" and then similarly concluded: "Should strategists pick and choose from among all these ideas, like diners at a buffet table, or should they try to combine them into palatable dishes as chefs do back in the kitchen? … the answer has to be yes, both times. Every Strategy process has to combine various aspects of the different schools." In their highest level of application, which they refer to as "animating" the Strategy Palette, authors: Reeves, Haanaes and Sinha identify and describe eight leadership roles which mirror their given names: "diagnostician, segmenter, disruptor, team coach, salesperson, inquisitor, antenna and accelerator". When business leaders assume such roles, at opportune times, they inevitably find ways upgrade their ongoing strategic process. Integration and synthesis became strategic essentials more than a decade ago. Strategy is not "deliberate" or "emergent", but both, in thoughtful orchestration, over time. By mapping eighty-one strategy paradigms onto the five approaches of the Strategy Palette, "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" demonstrates its integrative appeal; and, by fostering "ambidexterity" and "animation", Reeves et al. have given their readers a well developed collection of synthesizing behaviors. As someone who has taken a keen interest in business strategy for over forty years ─ as student, teacher, practitioner, business leader and strategic advisor ─ I delight in giving "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" my five-star rating.
G**S
An excellent overview of the field of strategy, some uncertainty regarding the value and novelty of the concept of ambidexterity
Reading Reeves et al.’s book “Your strategy needs a strategy” could be done with two distinct starting points: i) this book is an overview of main strains of thought in business strategy; or ii) it adds something in addition to same in the form of a meta-layer centered around the concept of ambidexterity. Starting with (i), this books could be seen as an excellent, though somewhat introductory overview of the field of business strategy, from strategic planning, to adaptive strategies, to visionary strategies, to shaping / platform strategies, and to renewal. My guess is indeed that that this book will be recommended reading at many leading business schools worldwide for this exact reason, and especially as it links various strands of strategic thinking together, and as it predicts winning strategies in any industry from industry fundamentals in the form of predictability, malleability, and harshness (pp. 6-7). Moving on to (ii), the book adds a dimension to current art by emphasizing the value generation by being strategically ambidextrous, or being able to “combine different, potentially opposed strategic approaches to thrive in the long run”. According to the authors’, the most ambidextrous companies outperformed the market by 10-15% of total shareholder return on average between 2006-2011, so this is clearly a value-generating concept (p. 177). There are two issues here: a) The book has no explicit notion of business unit strategy, as opposed to corporate strategy, to the extent that such distinction is meaningful for today’s organizational forms. However, it seems that ambidexterity is primarily a corporate-level concept. It would then have been of interest to explore more in depth why the difference in outcome can be explained specifically by ambidexterity (as explained in this book) and not for example by managing various business units in a portfolio manner (using for example BCG’s growth-share matrix) or based on traditional synergy-based approaches. b) For those of us who believe that superior shareholder returns are fundamentally generated at business unit level, the claim of 10-15% out-performance attributable to ambidexterity (and not to say good business unit-level strategies and execution) seems intriguing, but speculative. The book has an interesting approach to quantifying the value of various strategic approaches in various environment, based on BCG’s multi-armed bandit (MAB) simulation model. I guess the charts in the book with profitability as function of time for various generic strategic approaches confirm what most of us could have qualitatively sketched on the back of an envelope, but for the mathematically inclined it feels good to see that the profitability of a generic strategic approach may be modeled in a mathematically stringent way. On the other hand, the book is weak on conflict / competition, which, in addition to uncertainty and optionality, is besides what separates business strategy from business planning. The book ends with solid lists of references / recommendations for further reading and notes. In conclusion, an extremely good read for your summer vacation!
M**L
Elegence in simplicity
Excellent book for anyone wanting empirical knowledge of strategy management in practice. (If you want to know how it differs from the theory of strategy management, you'll need to read my [somewhat less good] thesis!) ;-) There are some great analyses, based upon years of research by the Boston Consulting Group; there are also some new strategic tools with merit. On this topic, though, I should mention the Strategy Palette, on which much of the premise of the book is based: initially, it seems a bit basic, certainly for experienced strategy practitioners or executives, but the simplicity is also a mark of strength here - there's little to confuse and it does encapsulate the themes nicely. Overall, I would thoroughly recommend this book, as a usable and practical aid to your strategic intentions; providing rarely-seen sources of information and fresh perspectives.
E**L
THE BEST BOOK ON STRATEGY FOR A LONG TIME TO COME - IT WILL DEFINE STRATEGY FOR YEARS
The best strategy book I have after Michael Porter's books written in the 1980s. The beauty about this book is that it integrates many of the disparate strategic tools into cohesive strategic approaches. The gist is that your strategy should be based on deep understanding of the context in which you operate. All the strategy work of the past 30-40 years is organized in the best way I have ever seen. Gary Hamel has been preaching for years that our approach to strategy has to change and this book nails this issue the best. If I have to rank this book in history of strategy it will be thus: 1) Porter's books. 2) This book. 3) Disruptive innovation (by Christensen). 4) Blue Ocean strategy. 5) Bottom of the pyramid (Prahalad) 6) End of Competitive advantage (by McGrath) and 6) The book on Steve Jobs (by Issacson), to know about ecosystems. The book is worth every page and every penny and more! As a strategist myself this book is a great user guide and the authors have done a great job!
A**R
Three Stars
Okay
P**E
Very good book!
A good guide for someone starting in a leadership role!
R**K
5 stars for content, 3 stars for readability
This is a very good book and with a clever title it grabbed my attention. It goes over the high level dirty details of 5 main strategy strategies but with only 200 pages and not enough time to really dive into how to implement, it simply whet's appetites. I would have loved to see which further books the authors would recommend to help implement each of the major strategies. In the chapters they do allude to some guidance but this book was more of a summary of strategy and not the meat and potatoes.
M**Á
Un excelente marco de referencia para navegar los negocios segun su estado
Un excelente libro que conglomera las distintas escuelas de estrategia y nos dice en que entorno tienen mayor probabilidad de éxito de ser efectiva y trae un concepto fenomenal que es ser ambidiestro en los negocios - tener la capacidad de buscar nuevos activos para crecer a la par que se busca la eficiencia con los que ya se tiene. Lectura obligada para consultores/empresarios y demás interesados en los negocios.
J**S
Buen libro
si lo que requieres es entender que la flexibilidad ante la forma en como ejecutas tu estrategia define mucho del exito de la misma.
A**Y
A must read
Whether you are an entrepreneur, manager, or a leader, this is a must read. Easy to read and full of real life examples. The game comes with it is really fun. The book summarizes the main types of business strategies and when and how to deploy each one. It takes a big portion of the business mystery out of the picture.
C**N
Ottimo libro sull'argomento
Fantastico libro sulla strategia, comprensibilissimo e utile a chiunque voglia farsi un idea del da farsi nel business odierno. Indispensabile
T**E
Not what i expected
I discovered the author of this book through a TED talk which i thought was fascinating so I decided to buy his book and there was 0 link with what he'd explained in his TED talk i didnt get anything out of this book
高**彦
just interesting
面白かった。戦略論のこれまでの流れを整理するにも役に立つと思う。
Trustpilot
1 month ago
2 weeks ago