Strategy Dynamics Essentials

Strategy is a CONTINUOUS challenge. Managers want outcomes to get better over time - more good customers, higher profits, better service quality and so on. Standard strategy methods and financial targets offer little help with this, because they mostly focus on fixing ratios, such as profit margins or return on capital. (When you have got your profit margin from 12% to 15%, what are you going to do next to grow profits?)

Strategy Dynamics is totally about "performance over time", both understanding how it has been up to now (because that tells us much about how things actually work) and making it get better into the future. It can be used in any situation, and at any level - for a specific functional issue, for a whole enterprise, or for a complex multi-business corporation. (It also works just as well for non-business organisations).

Being based on rock-solid method - "theory", if you like - it is reliable and repeatable. And being time-based, it can be continually updated. Think of it like the control panel that sits at the front of a physical system, such as a power grid or manufacturing process. (It's not quite so deterministic, though, because we are dealing with issues that include human factors, like customer behavior or employee loyalty and effort).

This book sets out the "Essentials" of Strategy Dynamics - the core elements that together explain whatever performance outcome you are concerned about - organised in a step-by-step process. You will see those things in the system that you and others in the organisation control, continually, with the decisions that you take. Then, you can work out and test better ways of making those decisions to improve performance into the future. This makes the method a powerful tool for strategy implementation and control. (More at http://strategydynamics.com/info/what-is-strategy-dynamics.aspx).

The method is supported by a simple but powerful software, Sysdea, with which you can 'map' your situation - laying out what-causes-what and quantifying any items you want. But you can go further, and calculate those relationships to give you a living model of the business and its performance - including interactions with its market and competitors.

(Readers familiar with 'system dynamics' will recognise the underlying method - the book just translates those principles into business language and procedures that anyone can follow).