In Learning to Think Strategically, author Julia Sloan presents a previously unexamined account of the relationship between strategic thinking and the learning process involved — taking learning from the academic to the everyday. This book is an original primer on how successful strategists learn to think strategically. This authoritative book traces the history of strategy, differentiates strategic thinking from planning, describes the influence of culture, streamlines the roles of rationality and intuition, and identifies five key attributes for learning to think strategically. Learning to Think Strategically asserts that learning is the critical link to strategic thinking. Learning is a "conversion tool" that can transform thinking strategically into a sustainable competitive advantage.
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
Bring strategy into your daily work. It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work--and the work of your team--aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list. You'll learn how to: Understand your organization's strategy Align your team around key objectives Focus on the priorities that matter most Spot trends in your company and in your industry Consider future outcomes when making decisions Manage trade-offs Embrace a leadership mindset
A practical workbook and accompanying CD-ROM which take the user through logical stages in strategic thinking. The CD-ROM contains worked examples and blank templates.
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.
A comprehensive playbook for applied design thinking in business and management, complete with concepts and toolkits As many companies have lost confidence in the traditional ways of running a business, design thinking has entered the mix. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies and also provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use in everyday work. It explains how design thinking can bring about creative solutions to solve complex business problems. Organized into five sections, this book provides an introduction to the values and applications of design thinking, explains design thinking approaches for eight key challenges that most businesses face, and offers an application framework for these business challenges through exercises, activities, and resources. An essential guide for any business seeking to use design thinking as a problem-solving tool as well as a business method to transform companies and cultures The framework is based on work developed by the author for an executive program in Design Thinking taught in Harvard Graduate School of Design Author Idris Mootee is a management guru and a leading expert on applied design thinking Revolutionize your approach to solving your business's greatest challenges through the power of Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation.
This book is for anyone who wants to be on track, in control, and prepared for the future. Through real life experiences, illustrated examples, and straightforward activities and tools, this book will enlighted readers; cause them to think, plan and act more strategically at the individual level and on the front lines of work.
At last-a proven system for developing the strategic innovations every company needs to compete and win As everyone knows, today's unprecedented rate of business change demands new levels of strategic insight and adaptability. Reinventing Strategy is the first practical, systematic guide to creating an adaptive enterprise, showing how companies around the world are using the Strategic Learning approach to consistently out think, out maneuver, and out perform their competition. As Willie Pietersen explains, companies that aspire to long-term success must develop and implement strategy as part of a continuous four-step cycle-Learn, Focus, Align, Execute-and he offers dozens of provocative anecdotes and case studies, illustrating how to implement it at every level of an organization. Written with unusual clarity, frankness, and wit, Reinventing Strategy will change the way managers everywhere approach their greatest and most important challenge: the need to make strategy into a tool for ongoing corporate renewal.
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.
