Cambridge Business Association
Stragility
Book

Stragility

Excelling at Strategic Changes

Lisa Hillenbrand
University of Toronto Press, 2016
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8

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Recommendation

Organizations must regularly update and transform their operations and activities or face becoming irrelevant. Yet, most transformations fail due to poorly developed or badly executed strategy, stakeholder hostility, internal political opposition, the incipient pressures that accompany any change, or a combination of these problems. To help companies maneuver through these issues, strategy experts Ellen R. Auster and Lisa Hillenbrand created the “Stragility” concept – a structured approach to implementing “strategic, agile, people-powered change.” They explain how your firm can implement Stragility’s insightful diagnostic drills and strategic practices to refine their tactics and keep pace with change. getAbstract recommends Auster and Hillenbrand’s insightful, intelligent and highly readable strategy manual to planners and executives.

Summary

Change Is Constant

According to the late management virtuoso Peter Drucker, the only companies that succeed are those that not only welcome change, but also lead it.

Since nearly constant change now defines how commerce works, organizations must adapt their strategies and tactics to address evolving competitive challenges. Staying current may involve launching new products or services, taking on challenging acquisitions, implementing extra innovation or restructuring individual business units. And amid all that, leaders must steadily attend to their daily business. This means meeting ever-expanding growth and profit targets; staying competitive; and dealing with technological, social and political disruption.

“Stragility”

To meet these goals, turn to the Stragility model, a transformation tactic designed to help you implement “strategic, agile, people-powered change.” This approach to addressing unceasing turmoil and ambiguity helps you compete by enabling your firm to identify, refine and execute necessary course corrections.

Stragility uses four “diagnostic tools”:

1. “Sense and Shift”

Strategy should never be static, so you must...

About the Author

Ellen R. Auster is professor of strategic management and founding director of the Schulich Center for Teaching Excellence at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto. Lisa Hillenbrand led the team that re-engineered Procter & Gamble’s brand-building approach.

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