How to use Strategic Learning to rapidly respond to change and gain a sustainable advantage over your competitors
What's even harder than creating a breakthrough strategy? Making it stick. As companies are fighting to survive in a tough economy, this new book by Willie Pietersen demonstrates the power of the Strategic Learning process, a four-step dynamic cycle guaranteed to create and sustain winning performance. Adopted by a wide range of corporations and not-for-profit organizations, the Strategic Learning process builds on eight years of practicing, adapting and honing the original concepts Pietersen first introduced in Reinventing Strategy to explain how organizations can generate superior insights about their customers and competitors, craft a Winning Proposition, focus on a vital few key priorities, create buy-in throughout the organization and achieve success – again and again.
- Teaches organizations to make smarter decisions that help them win customers and earn superior profits
- Explains how to instill a culture of openness, learning, and courage that can face and respond to the constantly changing business environment
- Is a tool that can benefit leaders at all levels, in organizations both large and small, global and domestic, for-profit and not-for-profit
- Author Willie Pietersen, a former president of Tropicana and Seagram USA, is a professor of management at Columbia Business School, and the author of Reinventing Strategy, from Wiley
Strategic Learning shows you how your business or nonprofit organization can develop better, more effective strategies for long-term competitive advantage.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
The New Competitive Context xiv
Winning in the New Environment xvi
Reinventing Strategy with Strategic Learning xvi
Why This Book? xviii
Getting to Excelling xix
Part I What Every Organization Needs to Know About Strategy 1
Chapter 1 The Real Job of Strategy 3
What Is Strategy? 5
What Key Questions Must Strategy Answer for Us? 6
Choice-Making in Action 8
Strategy and Planning Are Different 12
Closing the Doing/Excelling Gap 14
Chapter 2 Defining Competitive Advantage: How Much More Value Do You Deliver Than Your Competitors? 15
Mind the Gap 16
Stretching the Elastic Band 18
GM’s Race to the Bottom 21
Value Leadership through a Winning Proposition 24
What’s Your Winning Proposition? 26
The Moment of Truth 27
Part II Applying Strategic Learning to Create An Adaptive Enterprise 31
Chapter 3 Strategic Learning: Four Key Steps, One Cycle 33
Do You Have a Robust Method? 34
What Were We Thinking? 35
The Theory of Natural Selection 37
Complexity Theory 39
Learning Organizations 39
Strategy’s New Mission 40
The Five Killer Competencies 40
The Strategic Learning Cycle 41
What We’ve Learned from Deming 42
Building Capability through Deliberate Practice 43
Chapter 4 Learn: Using a Situation Analysis to Generate Superior Insights about Your External Environment and Your Own Realities 47
The ‘‘Sense and Respond’’ Imperative 48
Learning through the Situation Analysis 49
Analyzing Customer Needs 51
Who Are Our Stakeholders and Why Do They Matter? 59
Analyzing Competitors 63
Interpreting Industry Dynamics 66
Taking a Broader View 68
Facing Your Own Realities 69
Pulling Together the Situation Analysis 73
Winning the Battle for Insights 75
Doing a Great Situation Analysis: The Rules of Success 78
Chapter 5 Focus: Clarifying Your Winning Proposition and Identifying Your Key Priorities 81
Making Your Strategic Choices 81
The Parmenides Fallacy 83
Value Proposition versus Winning Proposition 87
Where Does Your Vision Fit In? 90
Delivering Superior Profits 90
The Three Bottom Lines 93
Your Key Priorities 95
How the Girl Scouts Did It 99
Deciding What Not to Do 103
Chapter 6 Align: Mobilizing Your Entire Organization behind Your Strategy 109
Leading a Journey 110
The Golden Rules of Successful Execution 112
Closing the Gaps 113
The Business Ecosystem 119
Changing an Organization’s Culture 125
Avoiding the Values Trap 131
Chapter 7 Overcoming Resistance to Change and Driving Momentum 135
Dealing with the Sources of Resistance 137
The Lessons of the Sigmoid Curve 138
The Curse of Success 139
Launching the Second Curve 142
Maximize Participation 146
Generate Short-Term Wins 149
Deal Directly with Resisters 150
Set a Shining Example 154
Chapter 8 Translating Your Strategy into a Compelling Leadership Message 157
What Is Leadership? 160
Building a Cathedral 161
Commander’s Intent 162
Who Are the Leaders? 163
Developing Your Leadership Message 165
The Power of Storytelling 167
The Need for Repetition 169
Chapter 9 Execute: Implementing and Experimenting in the Strategic Learning Cycle 171
Learning through Experimentation 172
Learning from Others 174
Learning from Mistakes 175
Experiential Learning: The After-Action Review 176
Strategic Learning 365 Days a Year 179
Part III Integrating Strategy and Leadership 181
Chapter 10 Leading through a Crisis 183
Dealing Successfully with the Unexpected 184
Learning Your Way Out of a Crisis 186
Building Readiness 188
Seizing Opportunities during a Crisis 190
The Human Dimension 191
Chapter 11 Becoming an Integrated Leader 195
The Three Domains of Leadership 196
Articulating Your Leadership Credo 199
The Quest for Self-Knowledge 201
The Lifeline Exercise 202
Applying Strategic Learning to Yourself 206
Conclusion The 5 Cs: Choices, Clarity, Change, Courage, and Compassion 211
The Five Cs 213
Appendix 217
Notes 219
Index 225
