Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence

by Rich Horwath

"A top 4 must-read business book to kickoff 2024!" Inc. Magazine
A USA Today National Bestseller and SHRM Top 12 New Book
Master the four disciplines of strategic fitness essential to executive performance
In Strategic, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework―the Strategic Fitness System―containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to evolving the company's business model for future success.
The practical content will help executives in any industry improve what research has shown to be the most important leadership factor to an organization's future success―strategic competence―and use this skill to transform complexity to clarity in charting their strategic direction. The book
A common language for strategy and business planning Practical tools for developing the four dimensions of executive fitness key to advancing the company's strategy, leadership, organization, and communication Techniques for designing enduring competitive advantage and frameworks for creating innovative new value for customers Methods for evolving the business model to transform the trajectory of the business The Strategic Quotient (SQ)―a validated assessment of an executive's strategic thinking, planning, and executionWith practical tools and dozens of real-world examples, readers of Strategic will immediately be able to set direction, create advantage, and achieve executive excellence. Be more than tactical—be Strategic.

Genres: Business, Leadership

269 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 30, 2023

About the author

Rich Horwath is the CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute, and has helped more than 100,000 managers around the world develop their strategic thinking skills. He is the author of seven books, including StrategyMan vs. The Anti-Strategy Squad: Using Strategic Thinking to Defeat Bad Strategy and Save Your Plan. He is a former Chief Strategy Officer and professor of strategy at the graduate level, and has spoken to managers at companies such as Google, Intel, FedEx, Bank of America, and L’Oreal.

Reviews

[William Bahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great handbook helping businesses be more strategic

First of all, as a former corporate strategic business planner, I congratulate Rich Horwath for, unlike many other strategy authors, giving a good, clear, and useful definition of the word “strategy.” Some authors deny his/my type of definition, others give overly complicated definitions, and still others, almost unbelievably, give no definition at all! Indeed, most notable and praiseworthy is the author’s penchant for definitions that clarify the scope of his advice throughout the 269 informative pages.

As regards the thrust of this excellent book, Horwath surveys the art of strategy, primarily business strategy. He structures his work into four main parts relating to fitness: Strategy, Leadership, Organization, and Communication. He knows and explains his craft well. He offers plenty of real-world examples and survey statistics to back up his points. He also includes valuable to-do, to-don’t, and to-ask checklists, as well as interesting and pertinent quotes not only from business but from other strategic areas such as sports.

My favorite chapter (the last of sixteen) is on meetings. To save businesses money (sometimes millions of dollars), Horwath advises meetings should be less for information sharing and more for decisions, with information sharing done previously for preparation in the form of written communications.

As for possible improvement in any revision, my personal preference would be for highlighting the titles of his many checklists. Other times, he uses colorful and analogic non-business descriptors to summarize his business points. Thus, unfortunately, in my review of his various main points, the descriptors (for example, “fine wine”) often easily lose meaning.

But overall, this is an excellent book that covers not only an incredible collection of standard business tools but many of the author’s own design. Highly recommended for any business library!

If interested in more information about strategy in general, consider reading the following book, which distills and integrates the works of 87 master strategists: Strategic Advantage: How to Win in War, Business, and Life

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of THE most practical leadership and strategy books I have read in a long while. The book is sufficiently underlined, highlighted and circled. I especially appreciated finding both big picture, cultural takeaways along with the nitty gritties of implementation and relevant practices. Real-life examples were also able to back up these the concepts.

[Mohammed Asadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half part of the book is quite good, the business related part is good, when it gets to the organizations and people related topics I think the author is not an expert in that field rather he shares what he believes is right. But again for business strategy I think it's a good one.

[Racer_rajesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Common sense book, there is no secret sauce for creating strategy in the book. Most of the things are common sense. Good read for business leaders..

[Albert Gonzales · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow, but some good points.

[Ryne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Like someone asked Chat GPT to write a productivity book.

Only personable section was something with his son's legos that I couldn't care less about.

[Dr. Saad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to read please