The Strategist

Be the Leader Your Business Needs

HarperBusiness, 2012

15 Minuten Lesezeit

10 Take-aways

Audio & Text

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Becoming a strategist is the best thing you can do for your business.

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Overview

Recommendation

Professor Cynthia A. Montgomery, who taught at Harvard Business School for more than 20 years, including six years leading the Entrepreneur, Owner, President (EOP) program, shares her process for learning to create and oversee strategy. Writing in a straightforward, engaging style, Montgomery offers ideas that are not too complex for beginner strategic thinkers but not so simple that experienced professionals cannot benefit from their insights. getAbstract recommends Montgomery’s case studies and her extensive classroom experience to current and aspiring business leaders.

Summary

Beyond SWOT

Anyone who graduated from business school in the past several decades is familiar with using a SWOT model to identify a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In the 1980s and ’90s, managers looked beyond SWOT to consider how forces in their industries affected their organizations. As deeper analytical tools became popular, consultants and analysts became specialists and took over the practice of strategy. However, strategy is not a problem with a fixed solution. Strategy must be fluid, responsive and malleable in response to an ever-changing environment. The leaders who bear responsibility for the overall vitality of a business must decide on its commitments. They cannot outsource strategy

Great leaders are strategists first. They oversee the crafting and recrafting of their organization’s strategy to adapt to contingencies, identify relevant opportunities, and respond to changes in the competition and the industry. The strategist chooses a corporation’s direction and decides on its best plan of action. All strategists must answer the question: “Does your company matter?” If leaders can’t articulate why their firm exists, what...

About the Author

Cynthia A. Montgomery has taught strategy at Harvard Business School for more than 20 years, most recently in its flagship executive program for owner-managed companies. She has served on the board of two Fortune 500 companies, numerous nonprofits and a number of BlackRock-managed mutual funds.

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M. C. 1 decade ago

Great. Must read for business leaders.

Cynthia A. Montgomery