The Strategy Book

by Max McKeown

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.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management, Leadership, Business Strategy, Self Help, Buisness

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Max McKeown is an English writer, consultant, and researcher specialising in innovation strategy, leadership and culture. He has written six influential books and conducts research with Warwick Business School. He is a fellow of the RSA.

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me be clear about the rating. I like the book but I am not crazy about the genre/category. If I give four stars to recent books by Thaler (Nudge) or Rumelt (Good Strategy/Bad Strategy), then three stars are appropriate here.

As a general introductory book to identify strategic questions, terms, ideas, etc., the book is fairly effective. The book is a series of sets of questions, organized around a variety of topics related to strategy. The questions are reasonable and are asked well. That by itself is a useful exercise and precisely what students or clients may find most valuable.

The book is comprehensive in its scope, by which I mean that it includes a variety of topics related to both strategy "content" -- what decisions does the firm and its managers need to make -- and strategy "process" -- how should planning and decision processes be organized and managed so that 1) all relevant information is utilized; 2) key contributors to the decisions and their processes are consulted; and 3) links are made to facilitate implementation.

I am not sure that this interest in covering both content and process is effective. The two topic areas are very different are easy to confuse. More than that, the logical relationship between making the right decision and using an effective process is far from clear. Can your process be exemplary but lead to a very bad decision? Can a good decision in terms of content tide a firm over even with very poor processes? These are all fundamental questions with the field that require much thought and perhaps more focus than would be useful in a short attempt to introduce them.

The book also features an extensive tool kit comprising summaries of some well known and popular strategy frameworks, such as Porter's five forces framework. This is an interesting idea and is not common among trade approaches to strategy. Addison-Wesley had a series of short volumes on specific approaches about 15 years ago and specific topical volumes are common for series on entrepreneurship, alliances, and SME management. The problem with putting short references to these approaches at the end of a volume is that it risks saying too much while providing too little support. In particular, some of the more economic frameworks are underdeveloped. What did Alexander Pope say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?

A larger problem with a toolkit view of strategy is that it presumes a view of strategy that can be deconstructed into problems, tools, frameworks, etc. This is a problem with the field and not with the author or his fine book. In my experience, however, strategy is crafted and customized for firms and the key issues related to strategic success concern how the parts of the strategy fit together for the firm within its broader industry context. Recent books on Apple and Steve Jobs show this clearly. This suggests that a craft approach might be more useful. Richard Sennett is an insightful author on such ideas.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes some useful ideas.

[Kevin Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for any business leader looking to improve business and putting strategy into practice at work. Many strategy books focus on theories and what should be done in an “ideal” setting, which hardly work in reality. They lead to the glossy (but often useless) strategy documents and presentations that chief strategy officers, strategy consultants and business heads love to write (and caused considerable pain to people in the organization).

In Dr Max McKeown’s book, he instead breaks strategy down into bite-sized concepts starting from strategic thinking before jumping into the grand plan. It also does not shy away from discussing the pitfalls of each concept preparing the reader to create real and implementable strategy.

Each chapter is easy to read, starting from a simple case study and follows an intuitive flow of Objective and Context of the strategic concept, leading on to Challenges and Pitfalls and finally how Success is measured.

The Quick Strategy Canvas and the idea of the Competition Wall has already found its way onto my office walls! That’s how useable and applicable the book is!

[Richfield Branch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took many of the prompts in this book and added them to my team's Design Challenge Wall. Two employees have mentioned how the prompts helped them get out of the rut of how to even address the challenge on the wall.

Such prompts include: What do we do today that was impossible yesterday, what makes your distinct, where can we recognize new unplanned opportunities, do we challenge assumptions, what are the risks and uncertainties in the field, how do we deal with things outside our control, how to anticipate change, what is the compition level and is it increasing, who's in your market, who could be, how is the industry doing, any crossover from new consumer trends, who's your inspiration/who does the best work?

[Harriet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I'm not entirely convinced by this book but it has some useful tools and concepts, especially in the second half of the book.

It's very much written from the perspective of a business competing in a market, but with a little thought it's not too hard to translate the principles to non-profit contexts.

I bought this ebook through Google Play, which was convenient at the time, but also quite annoying because it won't let you download the book in any format, so you're a bit limited on where you can read it.

[Auriane Sauv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any economics students or have studied basic economics subject before would find this book bordering on the obvious. Though there are a lot interesting case studies and examples, the key points and advices do overlap each other from chapters to chapters. A token of the words written seem to be just for fillers.

[Jean Snow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be very informative, and it's written in a style very easy to understand, and structured in a way that I'm sure will be easy to refer back -- and this is indeed a book that you read through, and then refer back to as you try to implement some of the stuff you learned, especially the "toolkit" section.

[Bonface M. K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The nice thing about this book is that it's really shallow and does not delve deep into some topics. It's a really nice book to quickly become aware of concepts around strategy. However, the prose is mediocre imo.

[Abdul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding

Incredible and truly informative. This is a great book for all aspiring strategist. It gives you direction and valuable insight to perform your task as a strategist. The skills shared in this book is also transferable to other disciplines.

[Hildebrando Quiroz · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book and a set of tools to keep with you all time

a book and a set of tools to keep with you all time

This book provides plenty of tools to use while defining and working toward creating or improving your strategy, for your team or to understand your company strategy

[Nilesh Patil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okayish.

I Haven't found it very interactive. If you are too new to the strategy world find something which is simple.

[Ruben Yesin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Toolkit

It shows a lot of strategy tools which you could choose towards challenging or developing your most suitable in order to create your own strategy way

[Prateek Vasisht · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only models

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful reference

[Yinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives a good high level summary of strategies and great for readers looking for bite-sized learnings. Personally I would have preferred something with stories, more depth and actionable frameworks.

[CaitPud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for reader who wants a beginner's knowledge on how to create strategy and understand business landscapes.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Strategy Book

Great examples of how to move forward
Structured thinking through questions
Looking forward to having a go
Emphasis on team

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of dry and lagging in parts but overall a great example frameworks and a toolkit/reference

[Zahida Zahoor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lots of jargon, dull and no examples. I finished the book still not fully understand strategy. Just general concepts on planning and researching. Poor

[Rachel]

pg 145 meetings for strategic minds
pg 174 Strategy Book toolkit - looks very helpful, lots of charts and action items

[Katarina (Kat) Kemner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Elementary. Avoid

[Sriram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not enjoy the book as it was not practical

[Abdelkarim Abdellatief · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice book

It’s a nice book, simple and to the point. Very helpful, you will feel like having a conversation with a friend who gives you good recommendations for your issues

[Alessya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and to the point

[Nathanael Coyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliantly succinct book that brings strategy planning and implementation down from the vaporous conceptual heights of theory and makes it concrete, practical and accessible.

Max Mckeown's The Strategy Book is structured, well-written and actionable starting with a reflective look on personal skills as a strategist, exploring development of strategy and then implementation and management. The last section includes over two dozen models that you can use for analysing your market, your organisation and your strategy.

His methodology and philosophy pulls together the best parts of emergent, learning and formal strategy synthesis and he encourages regular review and course adjustment.

This book belongs on the desk of anyone who considers themselves a strategic thinker from the CEO down to design strategists and project managers.

[Daniel Forbes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a book that's full of good, solid, practical advice. You'll learn that Strategy is about shaping your future. Here's some questions to which you'll find the answer:
- What is strategy?
- What's more important, planning or reacting?
- How can you think better and differently?
- What does careful planning not always work?
- What can't strategy solve?
- Do unpredictable events make strategy useless?
- What's the purpose of strategic thinking?
- How do you sell others on your ideas?
- What are the limits of good planning?
- When is it time to change strategy?
- How do you make sure everyone on your team knows what success looks like?
- Why is the strategy you create never complete?

[Sujata Sahni]

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results ~ Winston Churchill. Do you see the big picture? Do you think long term? Do you look forward, backwards and outwards? It is not a solo sport and involves people at all levels, a major part of which is change and managing the change. Today, saving your company from failure and staying ahead is business as usual. Where are we, where do we want to go, what changes have to be made, how should they be made and how shall we measure progress and what is the appetite for change? The book contains a lot of strategy models which can be considered for planning and testing strategy at regular intervals.

[Maarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives a good overview. Was afraid it would be too school-ishly built up because of the fixed structured of each chapter, but it is not the case. If a few more and elaborate use cases would have been included a higher rating would have been appropriate.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book is great, the writing is informative and captivating, complex ideas are simplified.

The second half lists strategies and gives each one two pages. the book doesn't really explain how our when to use them.

good read let down by the second half of the book

[Shahzad Iqbal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is book is out-standing, very precisely explain about how to structure organisation strategies.
it used very basic idea and concepts to teach a reader about developing strategy by using different options.