The Londoner

By Andrew Hill, FT.com site Published: Sep 25, 2007 Shareholders don't necessarily expect their chief executives to spend time reading business books. Thinking about business, yes. Doing business, definitely. But reading about it? Picture Jeff Immelt, General Electric's chief executive, settling down for a couple of hours with Barbarians at the Gate, the 1990 classic narrative about the buy-out of RJR Nabisco. Or Lakshmi Mittal, head of ArcelorMittal, dissecting Built to Last, the Jim Collins/Jerry Porras analysis of the world's most durable visionary companies. It sounds at best a waste of their time, at worst a dereliction of duty: "Hold the mega-merger - I'm just finishing the chapter on leadership. " Yet a Financial Times' straw poll of a range of top global executives, entrepreneurs and experts revealed that most had found at least one business book - including the books above, recommended by Mr Immelt and Mr Mittal - particularly useful, even inspiri

By Morgen Witzel Published: January 17 2008 02:00 | Last updated: January 17 2008 02:00 Ask almost any successful athlete the secret of their success and you will hear words such as "preparation" and "training", along with "commitment", "determination" and "the will to win". Athletes excel because they want to, and have trained body and mind to give the highest possible level of performance. So it is with businesses. Over and over again, academic studies and practical experienceshow that preparation, organisation and determination are critical factors for achieving strategic goals. That has not stopped gurus and would-be gurus from flooding us with books that purport to offer recipes for being good at strategy. Usually these are based on a limited number of examples of - apparently - successful companies. Too many guides to strategy are based on little more than the authors' own opinions. So it is a relief to turn to Fast Strategy,

Strategic Breadth Many current books include the term "strategy" in their titles and/or chapter headings and/or indices. So strategy in an "in" term by which to characterize your diagnosis or prescription within any number of policy areas. I have read many of these books, and learned a great deal. BUT, I have noticed that various of these authors contradict one another regarding both the analysis and the advice being offered -- yet each argument seems credible within the context of the book! So what is going on here? Can contradictory arguments all be correct, or are they all wrong? I was never sure how to resolve this dilemma until I read Whittington. The problem is that "strategy" is not a unified field. Strategic thinking occupies a conceptual space in which there is room for different policies, tactics, and intelligence gathering. Within strategic space, there are four archetypal quadrants, each with different assumptions, goals, methods, and perspecti

Strategy is a word that is often misunderstood. Many experts (and nonexperts) have made fortunes trying to explain it with all kinds of scenarios and buzzwords, but they have only made matters worse. We need to talk plainly about strategy. That will make it easier for you to contribute to the strategic development of your organization. An organization that has a clear strategy – and consistently applies it – generally achieves its goals. How often have you heard an organization say its strategy is market domination? Actually, this is an objective, not a strategy. If an organization is planning to dominate a market, it must ask itself why it wants to do so (clear benefits must be foreseen) and how it is going to get there. Strategy defined Strategy is the art of deploying resources toward an adopted objective. It's looking at the big picture, asking a lot of "what ifs" and charting a course of action. Strategy comes from the military; it's the "how" part of

In strategic planning it is critical to formally consider how your organization will accomplish its goals. The answer to this question is a strategy. There are a variety of formal definitions for strategies, but everyone fundamentally agrees that a strategy is the answer to the question, "How?" "Strategies are simply a set of actions that enable an organization to achieve results." MAP for Nonprofits, St. Paul, MN "Strategy is a way of comparing your organization's strengths with the changing environment in order to get an idea of how best to complete or serve client needs." Jim Fisk & Robert Barron, The Official MBA Handbook Essentially, there are three different categories of strategies: organizational, programmatic, and functional. The difference among the categories is the focus of the strategy: Organizational strategy outlines the planned avenue for organizational development (e.g., collaborations, earned income, selection of businesses,

Strategy Is . . . A Lot of Things Fred Nickols 2000 This is one of several occasional papers I wrote about strategy and strategic planning while I was head of strategic planning and management services at Educational Testing Service. I wrote them as a way of clarifying my thinking and communicating my thoughts to others. I wrote this one to remind myself that strategy means so many things to so many people that it is difficult to have a meaningful conversation about strategy unless you define your terms. Most of all, I wrote it to remind myself that strategy is execution. Strategy Is . . . Strategy is many things: plan, pattern, position, ploy and perspective. As plan, strategy relates how we intend realizing our goals. As pattern, strategy is the "rhyme and reason" that emerges in the course of making the endless decisions that reconcile the reality we encounter with the aims we hold dear. As position, strategy is the stance we take: take the high ground, be the low-cost

THE MOST IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES FOR THE CONDUCT OF WAR These principles, though the result of long thought and continuous study of the history of war, have nonetheless been drawn up hastily, and thus will not stand severe criticism in regard to form. In addition, only the most important subjects have been picked from a great number, since a certain brevity was necessary. These principles, therefore, will not so much give complete instruction to Your Royal Highness, as they will stimulate and serve as a guide for your own reflections. CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ I. PRINCIPLES FOR WAR IN GENERAL 1. The theory of warfare tries to discover how we may gain a preponderance of physical forces and material advantages at the decisive point. As this is not always possible, theory also teaches us to calculate moral factors: the likely mistakes of the enemy, the impression created by a daring action, . . . yes, even our own desperation. None of these things lie outside the realm of the theory and art of war