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The Strategy Book
- By Max McKeown
- Published Jan 9, 2012 by FT Press.
- Copyright 2012
- Dimensions: 5 X 9
- Pages: 272
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-273-75709-1
- ISBN-13: 978-0-273-75709-2
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Product Author Bios
Max Mckeown is an author, consultant and popular speaker in the strategy field. He shares cutting edge research with clients in the real world of major corporations. Max has a PhD and MBA with a speciality in strategy and strategic change. His clients sit across multiple sectors including: Microsoft, Virgin, Sun International, 2012 Olympics, Toyota and TopShop. He is the author of several books including E-Customer, Why They Don’t Buy, Unshrink and The Truth about Innovation.
www.maxmckeown.com
Thinking strategically is what separates managers and leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips. It is peppered with punchy, memorable examples from real leaders winning (and losing) with real world strategies.
It can be read as a whole or you can dip into the easy-to-read, bite-size sections as and when you need to deal with a particular issue. The structure has been specially designed to make sections quick and easy to use – you’ll find yourself referring back to them again and again.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Where's the beef?,
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This review is from: The Strategy Book: How To Think and Act Strategically to Deliver Outstanding Results (Paperback)
I was really excited to receive this book based on all the excellent reviews. First a note personal note is in order. I work with clients to develop strategies for their business. Also, I judge a book by how actionable it is. Can I take the findings and apply them in real world situations using commonsense and a bit of real world experience. This book did not pass that test. In defense of the book, I think this would be hard, if not impossible in a small 234-page book.I think that if the author would have expanded the "how to" portions of the book he would have an excellent work that could truly be called "The Strategy Book" For an example of what I mean there is a section of the book that my internal dialog went something like this, yes I agree that it is important to be flexible and creative in lookin' at what may happen next in your strategic group (p.107) but can you give me an examples of ways to do this in an organization - maybe some shortcuts that you have learned... Read more
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory evolved." Sun Tzu, By
This review is from: The Strategy Book: How To Think and Act Strategically to Deliver Outstanding Results (Paperback)
Among Max Mckeown's "Final words" (Page 224) are these: "The principles in this book are based on the advice of the greatest strategic thinkers throughout the centuries and cutting-edge wisdom from the world's leader strategy researchers. Everything has been selected with great care. Each model in the strategist's tool kit is worth understanding and putting into practice." I agree completely. In my opinion, this is one of the three best general sources for strategy, all of which every executive should own and frequently consult.The other two? Michael Porter's On Competition (Updated and Expanded Edition) and Henry Mintzberg's Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management, one that Mckeown includes in his "Further reading" section. Mckeown provides a wealth of information, insights, and counsel to help his reader achieve strategic objectives such as these, rigorously discussed in Parts 1 and 2: o Using an appropriate... Read more
13 of 18 people found the following review helpful
"Max is brilliant, original and entertaining, a business philosopher" according to his own self-description, By Jackal (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Strategy Book: How To Think and Act Strategically to Deliver Outstanding Results (Paperback)
Sturgeon's law says that 90% of everything is crap, but I will provide advice on the remaining 10%Absolutely nothing unique or novel in the book. It is just a rehash of a bunch of framework and models. Nothing wrong with most of frameworks presented, but the author just gives the basics, kind of one-pagers of everything, and he presents too many models. For instance, the author does not seem to understand that the BCG matrix can seriously mislead companies into going for scale, when they would have been better off with a niche strategy. Subtleties like that do not get much room in this book. The author is probably a decent motivational speaker for middle management that needs to deal with a bit of everything, but I would not let him into the boardroom. Do yourself a favour, pick up one of the following books instead to understand strategy: *... Read more |
Table of Contents
About the author
Author's acknowledgements
Publisher's acknowledgements
Part 2 Thinking like a strategist
Reacting is as important as planning
Taking risks (jumping your uncertainty gaps)
Knowing where grass (really) is greener
Finding position, intention and direction
Looking for advantages
Making strategic decisions and choices
Adapting to your competitive environment
Getting ahead of your strategic group
Growing your business (again and again)
Going global without going broke
Knowing what you can do best
Part 5 Making your strategy work
Managing your strategy process
Meetings for strategic minds
Managing change, making strategy work
Understanding what can go wrong
Saving your company from failure
Part 6 The Strategy Book tool kit
The basic (powerful) strategy questions
Porter’s 5 forces of competition
Porter’s generic strategies
Burgelman’s strategy dynamics model
Porter’s value chain
Core competencies and resource-based view
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s knowledge spiral
BCG’s product portfolio matrix
Kim and Mauborgne’s blue ocean
Greiner's growth (and crisis) model
Treacy and Wiersema’s value disciplines
Cummings and Wilson: orientation and animation
Lewin’s force field analysis
Kotter’s eight phases of change
Kaplan and Norton’s balanced scorecard
Hrebiniak’s model of strategy execution
Hammer and Champy’s business process design
Michaud and Thoenig’s strategic orientation
Burgelman and Grove’s strategy bet model
Argyris’s double and single loop learning
Mintzberg’s deliberate and emergent
Johnson’s white space model
Prahalad’s bottom of the pyramid
Stacey’s strategy from complexity
Final words
Further reading
Index
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