L.J. Macko, Founder and Senior Strategic Advisor
Navigator Strategic Leadership Solutions LLC
23 November 2021
The attached article on the nature of strategy provides great insights and reference articles on strategy for the new MBA student and the strategy “experts” out there. For the startup or new small business leader the greatest value of the article is that it boils strategy down to just three critical courses of action that summarize the goal of any strategy.
The bottom line is that a strategy should define how a startup or business will do one of, or variations of, the three following things:
— Make or do something that no one else is making or doing.
— Building on what you do (to make it better or provide more value for reduced cost).
— React quicker or better to new opportunities or emerging trends.
If you as the startup leader or new small business owner can easily define how your business will accomplish one of the three “goals” described in the attached article, then you may have all the strategy you need to get going.
However, in today’s reality of a rapidly changing workforce, changing work environments (remote versus in person), and supply chain and economic issues, one has to remain alert to the need to adapt one’s strategy at a faster rate than was done in the past.
What the article doesn’t address is possibly the most critical element for startup and small business success, that is execution. If just having a good strategy was enough for business success, there wouldn’t be an approximate 67% failure rate of corporations who failed to execute (put into action) their corporate strategy, not to mention an entire field of study based on strategy execution/implementation.
The good news is both, that the 67% percent estimated strategy execution failure rate is much lower than the approximate 90% rate of the 1990s and there is now a good amount of excellent literature available on strategy execution.
The article below recommends a lot of good references that describe strategy development in detail and mention some of the most popular authors on strategy, Michael Porter (Competitive Strategy) and W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Blue Ocean Strategy). For your benefit, I have provided a list below of some of my favorites.
Recommended Reading/References:
Books on Strategy and Strategy Development that I like (there are many more):
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt
Strategy Maps Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Strategy Pure & Simple II: How Winning Companies Dominate Their Competitors by Michel Robert
As for strategy execution, listed below are a few of the books I found useful in no particular order, however there are a lot more to choose from so consider this a starter list:
Books on Strategy Execution:
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Excellence in Execution: How to Implement Your Strategy by Robin Speculand
The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak
I hope the article above and references can help you get started on your business or startup journey. I would appreciate hearing from you, the reader, about what your number one challenge might be related to turning your strategy or vision into action.
Please email me at lj.macko@navigatorstrategicleadership.com with any comments or questions.
https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2015/05/what-is-strategy-again
The attached article on the nature of strategy provides great insights and reference articles on strategy for the new MBA student and the strategy “experts” out there. For the startup or new small business leader the greatest value of the article is that it boils strategy down to just three critical courses of action that summarize the goal of any strategy.
The bottom line is that a strategy should define how a startup or business will do one of, or variations of, the three following things:
— Make or do something that no one else is making or doing.
— Building on what you do (to make it better or provide more value for reduced cost).
— React quicker or better to new opportunities or emerging trends.
If you as the startup leader or new small business owner can easily define how your business will accomplish one of the three “goals” described in the attached article, then you may have all the strategy you need to get going.
However, in today’s reality of a rapidly changing workforce, changing work environments (remote versus in person), and supply chain and economic issues, one has to remain alert to the need to adapt one’s strategy at a faster rate than was done in the past.
What the article doesn’t address is possibly the most critical element for startup and small business success, that is execution. If just having a good strategy was enough for business success, there wouldn’t be an approximate 67% failure rate of corporations who failed to execute (put into action) their corporate strategy, not to mention an entire field of study based on strategy execution/implementation.
The good news is both, that the 67% percent estimated strategy execution failure rate is much lower than the approximate 90% rate of the 1990s and there is now a good amount of excellent literature available on strategy execution.
The article below recommends a lot of good references that describe strategy development in detail and mention some of the most popular authors on strategy, Michael Porter (Competitive Strategy) and W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Blue Ocean Strategy). For your benefit, I have provided a list below of some of my favorites.
Recommended Reading/References:
Books on Strategy and Strategy Development that I like (there are many more):
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt
Strategy Maps Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Strategy Pure & Simple II: How Winning Companies Dominate Their Competitors by Michel Robert
As for strategy execution, listed below are a few of the books I found useful in no particular order, however there are a lot more to choose from so consider this a starter list:
Books on Strategy Execution:
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Excellence in Execution: How to Implement Your Strategy by Robin Speculand
The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak
I hope the article above and references can help you get started on your business or startup journey. I would appreciate hearing from you, the reader, about what your number one challenge might be related to turning your strategy or vision into action.
Please email me at lj.macko@navigatorstrategicleadership.com with any comments or questions.
https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2015/05/what-is-strategy-again
