Strategy is Most Important in Uncertain Times; Fortunately, an Audiobook Version of "The Essence of Strategy"…

Strategy is Most Important in Uncertain Times; Fortunately, an Audiobook Version of "The Essence of Strategy" has just been published. [To be read whilst listening to "The Road To Nowhere" by Talking Heads] I love strategy. I think strategy is the most underrated, poorly understood, and badly implemented discipline in the world. I wrote a book about strategy called "The Essence of Strategy" in 2016, and towards the start of the book I argued for stepping up our strategy game. Here are some of the key points: * Strategy is a succinct statement of where we play and how we win. * Without strategy, life is just a game of 'brute force'. Those with more win. Domains where you don't have enough are unavailable to you. * Strategy is not a "high falutin'" luxury for the good times. It is even more important in tough times. Strategy, including preparing strategic options, is incredibly important in volatile and uncertain times. And I think we could all agree that current times, particularly geopolitically, technologically and economically are pretty uncertain. * Strategy is different from planning. Planning is important but more fragile and more volatile than strategy. If your strategy changes as often as your plans, you don't have a strategy. * Everything in a strategy should represent a choice, ideally stated as a 'strategy- antistrategy' pair. What we will do and what we won't do. Anything that doesn't have a valid alternative, an anti-strategy, should not be in a strategy. Very few strategy documents achieve this. * The current business climate is a 'tyranny of execution'. There is an unstated subtext that strategy is a 'tick the box' exercise, but organizations really win through execution. This makes it very difficult for strategists to have influence. * The word 'strategy' has ceased being a word, and become a specialized punctuation mark, that everyone puts next to other words to make their work seem important. "Operations Strategy." "Facilities Management Strategy." etc. Happily, Amazon sent me an email yesterday informing me that I was selected to use a beta service to turn my book into an audiobook, so I went for it. It was a surprisingly great experience, with great outputs. If you fancy a listen, there is a link to the audiobook on Amazon below. If you do happen to listen to it (or read it), I would love to hear what you think. #unask #unthink #unlearn #strategy #TheEssenceOfStrategy