The Complete Strategy Collection (Strategy Skills: Techniques to Sharpen the Mind of the Strategist)

One of the reviews and endorsements for “Strategy Skills: Techniques to Sharpen the Mind of the Strategist”:

“One of those rare occasions where you can’t stop thinking about the stuff you’ve just read…Instead of just reading the book and concluding “well this is nice, I’ve learned A, B and C” it made me think about my company and experiences from the past a lot and for a long time. Highly recommended for anybody involved in business, except perhaps for large ego’ed MBA’s….”
Henk Alles, ex-MediaLabs, Xerox Parc, and CEO Infolution.


The ultimate text in the Strategy Skills series, this new book offers a fresh model of strategizing, with many practical applications to real world challenges. Arguably one of the most original books in the area for many years, it is recommended for anyone wanting novel perspectives and accelerated learning in the fields of strategy, planning and competition.

Chapter Highlights include:

Section One – “Beginnings”
Chapter 1: Understood Backwards
How strategy is central to human history and thought.
Chapter 2: Success
How the pre-eminent theory of strategic management can wrestle simplicity from the vast complexity of strategizing.

Section Two – “Criticisms”
Chapter 3: Learning Strategists
The disturbing truth of what practicing strategists actually do.
Chapter 4: Critical Thinking
How biases infect our thinking and some (partial) solutions.
Chapter 5: Networks, Bankers and Bonuses
Social networks can be powerful forces for good or bad.
Chapter 6: The Partially-Mute Hypocrite
The bigger the gap between plans and practical experience, the bigger the opportunity for hypocrisy and failure.
Chapter 7: Extended Minds in the Anti-Creative Flux
How our thoughts are externalized into powerful flowing processes that can limit our creativity.
Chapter 8: Strange Love of Game Theory
How Game Theory is a powerful yet very limited tool for strategy.
Chapter 9: Incompleteness and Completely Losing $4.6bn
There is not and never will be a “complete” recipe for creating strategy.

Section Three – “Approaches”
Chapter 10: The Arachne Principle
How practice, craft and experience trump theory and models of strategic management.
Chapter 11: Despair
Experimentalism is one way to counter the near-ubiquity of failure in organizations.
Chapter 12: Swan with Risk
Most important risks are not measurable or predictable and so risk analysis must turn to ways to absorb the pain and profit from new opportunities so created.
Chapter 13: Adventurous Forecasting
The value of a forecast is inversely proportional to its accuracy; bad forecasts can teach us how little we really know and thereby prompt a shift to more adaptive and flexible ways.
Chapter 14: Seeing Good Ideas
Strategy is complex and ideas need to be shared; visualizations are the best means to show and share.
Chapter 15: Complex Praise
Complexity theory is hard to make practical and yet its implications – some things you control and some things control you – are vital to clear strategic thinking.
Chapter 16: Guile Guides
Strategizing is a heavy cognitive load, but there are ways to strengthen the thinking muscles.
Chapter 17: Intelligence
Strategy is a kind of organizational intelligence and shared plans can increase the organization's cognitive capacities.
Chapter 18: Drugs and Meaning
A profound sense of meaning is vital to long-term and potent strategy.
Chapter 19: Deep Games
Great strategy plays upon a deep appreciation of the game-like nature of organizations and competition.
Chapter 20: Directions to a Phantom
While you can’t learn strategy, you can learn to strategize and this text has outlined some formidable methods for enabling deeper insight to an opaque, contested and hitherto over-formalized field.

Glossary
References from the Chapters