Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage

by Glenn R Carroll, Jesper B. Sørensen

Making strategy requires undertaking major—often irreversible—decisions aimed at long-term success in an uncertain future. All leaders must formulate a clear course of action, yet many lack confidence in their ability to think systematically about their strategy. They struggle to apply the abstract lessons offered by conventional approaches to strategic analysis to their unique contexts.Making Great Strategy resolves these challenges with a straightforward, readily applicable framework. Jesper B. Sørensen and Glenn R. Carroll show that one factor underlies all sustainably successful a logically coherent argument that connects resources, capabilities, and environmental conditions to desired outcomes. They introduce a system for formulating and managing strategy through a set of three core visualization, formalization and logic, and constructive argumentation. These activities can be implemented in any organization and are illustrated through examples and case studies from well-known companies such as Apple, Walmart, and The Economist.This book shows that while great strategic thinking is hard, it is not a mystery. Widely applicable and relevant for managers and leaders at all levels, especially executive teams charged with setting the course of their organizations, it is essential reading for anyone faced with practical problems of strategic management.

Genres: Business, Management

348 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 26, 2021

Reviews

[Patty Chang]

Different from your average strategy book in that it focuses on how to improve decision making as a part of the strategic process. So often decision making is influenced by fads, impressions, imitations of success or simply gut feelings. This book helps recognize those pitfalls and suggests ways to define problems and approach them in a more rational and logical way. Sometimes just a simple question, like “what needs to be true for that outcome to happen” can reveal a lot of assumptions and biases of our thought process at a crucial stage. The book gives you a lot to think about.

[Pablo S.]

Great approach to strategy. It can be summarized as: use logic to build a strategy argument. Valuable theory. Beyond that, regarding the book itself, just repeat "strategy argument" every page of the book. The content could be half the pages and and deliver the same content.

[Theodore Kinni]

Terrific approach to formulating valid, sound strategy— no fireworks, just logic and constructive debate.

[Lilli Carlsen]

Excellent read. Completely changed the way I think about business strategy!

[Liezel]

A great book, but not an easy read.

[Regis Lucci]

RESUMO NO DRIVE