“Business Strategy: Plan Execute, Win!” by Patrick J. Stroh (John Wiley & Sons, $34.95).
Strong leaders and managers create strategy and make it work. So, it’s not surprising that leadership and management lessons are intertwined with Stroh’s “Everything I needed to learn about business strategy I learned …” advice.
From Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares: Know your sweet spot. “Chefs who stray too far from their comfort zone tend to get into trouble.” While new and/or different sound appealing, they come with great risk. Think about SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats); strategy should be based on acceptable risk.
Are you tasting your food? To ensure quality food, chefs taste test from start to finish. From a business standpoint, this means more than just using the product. To really understand the customer experience, you need to navigate your website and customer service channels. When the customer isn’t happy, strategy fails.
… At the movies. The Italian Job highlights planning. The opening minutes show the importance of staying one step ahead. When the robbers are robbed, they create a contingency plan and acquire the people and equipment necessary to make it work. Strategists need to think hard about the assets at their disposal. Can they do the job?
In Hoosiers, the coach sets boundaries, sticks to the basics of his basketball plan and inspires players to play within the team. Stroh’s message: Unselfish teamwork trumps individual skills.
“National Treasure” provides clues that must be deciphered, which lead to adventures and more clues in the quest for the treasure of the Knights Templar. Strategic intelligence in business follows a similar progression. The issue in these days of information overload: “Knowing which information to listen to, how to react to that information, and how to execute your next steps.” Beware of paralysis analysis because it disrupts both planning and execution.
Growing up on a farm: As Stroh recounts his childhood, he points out there’s quite a bit of planning that goes into the execution of crop rotation, planting, fertilizing, cultivating and harvesting. Failure in early steps means a poor harvest. Harvesting presents its own issue. You may have a great harvest only to find that the market has shifted.
He remembers the farm as a beehive of innovation because a focus on continuous process improvement helps drive cost competitiveness by making day-to-day work more efficient. Sharpen your saw: Benchmarking to what someone else is doing, means you’re always behind the learning curve.
From the Bible: Proverbs 29:18 — “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.” If the mission isn’t clearly understood, the team won’t work toward the same end, and execution will break down. Even with purposeful vision, execution never goes as planned. The tactics of strategy remain married to execution because you must be able to adapt quickly when facing obstacles.
Proverbs 13:10 — “Through presumption comes nothing but strife, but with those who receive counsel is wisdom.” Team members need to seek clarification when they aren’t certain of what path to take. It’s better to measure twice and cut once.
James 1:19 — “But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.” To understand the importance of content and the perspectives of others, you must listen to what they say. That said, Stroh believes that asking on-point questions during a presentation can create discussion better than asking questions at the end.
Gold nuggets: Write down two things from each chapter that you want to share with your colleagues. Use them to prompt discussion, and as a reference tool.
Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer.
