Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence

This is one of the best books on strategy. It presents clear, concrete ideas and clearly establishes what strategy is and the importance of thinking in an organization.

Best book I've come across to help understand strategy (particularly business strategy) and to develop / enhance strategic thinking. I listened to the audio book first. The narrator's voice is a bit dull but this was a great way to take the information in initially. Then I bought the book to be able to see the charts, go back to reread sections, and I've added markers to some really useful insights which I revisit every couple of months.

This book gets 5 stars for intent and effort. It is written by an experienced strategy facilitator. Rich Horwath brings 20 years real world experience to the table. As such, this book offers tools, checklists, practices that work in the real world. The strength of the book is exactly that. The book goes wide angle helping the reader assess “fitness” in 4 areas (strategy, leadership, organization, communication). The 16 chapters in the book are full of practical checklists. The very positive reader reviews here attest to that. A down to earth primer. Strategy 101 in the best sense. The book is not high concept like much of the academic literature. A plus. It is tool driven with emphasis on leaders and management teams working through challenges they face. As such, a good resource for managers and executives. In particular, chapters 5-8 on leadership will be helpful to individuals moving from smaller manager or solo contributor roles into larger leadership roles. The author is good at synthesizing best current thinking. That said, the strength of the book is also its great weakness. Thus, my disappointment. In simple terms, there are just too many checklists here. Too many ideas and practices introduced with cursory explanation. In brief, a menu offered with too many items on it. What is missing is depth. What is missing are rich, think description, case studies drawing directly on his consulting experience. What is missing, at a deeper level, is McKinsey like content know how linked with facilitation know how (the dual perspective needed in excellent strategy work). What is also missing are deep dive reflective observations by Horwath re his own learnings as a strategy practitioner and executive coach. Clearly, he has worked this terrain and knows all tools need to be adapted and tailored. That is the craft, the bricolage, the artistry, of strategy facilitation where best current thinking is translated into client needs and linked to the know how in the room. Strategic thinking is not paint by numbers. It requires discipline and agility and learning in real time. On that front, his own tacit know how needs to be made explicit. I acknowledge his extensive on the ground experience. I applaud his energy. I think his earlier book, Deep Dive, however, is better. More focused. Shorter. Goes deeper. To be critical and direct, this book is at best a collection (albeit useful) of strategy and leadership cliff notes. A compendium of the tools and templates he uses in his consulting work. Useful but indeed superficial. Particularly missing is a thoughtful discussion of success factors and pitfalls in strategy execution. A glaring weakness. A shorter and tighter and more focused book that goes deep unpacking case studies is the book I would have liked him to write. A book profiling high levels of what the author calls “strategic fitness”. A book more akin to Ram Charan’s work where client needs are in the foreground and live issues are unpacked and the advisor’s point of view is crystal clear. A practice driven book that is indeed much needed today given all the hype and fluff in the popular literature on strategic leadership. A book another thoughtful practitioner needs to write.

Strategic is both the most comprehensive and the most practical in a detailed way book on strategy that I’ve ever read. I recommend it very highly to anyone who has the responsibility to develop and guide a strategy for a group or an organization. In terms of comprehensiveness, the book uses a very broad framework that the author, Rich Horwath, calls Strategic Fitness: Strategy Fitness, Leadership Fitness, Organization Fitness, and Communication Fitness. He then dedicates four chapters to each of those four areas of Strategic Fitness. In this way he is able to do a deep dive into each area while explaining the connection between the four areas. I found this approach to be very helpful in keeping top of mind the broad concepts in the book. In terms of practical in a detailed way, this book provides a very wide array of tools, tips, quotes, examples, and definitions. Here are a few samples of what I mean: Tool: Your Strategic Quotient (SQ): Acumen (Thinking), Allocation (Planning), and Acumen (Acting) Tool: GOST Framwork (Goal, Objective, Strategy, Tactic) Tips: Throughout the book there are a few dozen very short tips called Rocket Burns and Trail Blazes Quotes: I’ve never read a book that had so many well-placed, relevant, and powerful quotes. Here is an example. On page 108 the author wrote, “Why would we want to prevent failure when a lot of people are advocating for it? Because ‘failing fast’ as a consistent route to success is a myth.” Then he included these two quotes: “My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.” – Marc Andreesen, co-founder of Netscape. And this quote, “What is the worst advice you see or hear given in your trade? Fail fast.” – Jack Dorsey, self-made billionaire, CEO of Square and former CEO of Twitter Examples – The author makes this point: “Strategy demands trade-offs – choosing your ‘nots.’ What products will we not offer? What customers will we choose not to serve.” Then he brings in the example of Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Definitions. This is my favorite part of the book. Horwath consistently takes words that can be very confusing, and he makes them understandable. This makes it much, much easier to apply the ideas in our work and our personal lives. For example, he wrote, “Strategic thinking is the ability to generate insights that lead to advantage.” Wow, that simplified what I’ve read in more than a dozen books on strategy into something that people can take to heart and move into action. Study a topic or an industry in detail, and then look for ways to turn those insights into real advantage for your group or organization. WARNING: Here’s my one warning on this book. Don’t give this book as a quick-read to your staff the night before your Annual Strategic Planning Two-Day Retreat. This book has way too much valuable content for you to sprint through it. Instead, give this book to your staff a month before the Strategy Meeting, and encourage everyone to read one chapter a day and let the ideas sink in. In this way, each person will be vastly better prepared to have an in-depth conversation on strategy.

Started highlighting and realized it was useless because 3/4 of the book would end up highlighted. I’ve read a lot of strategy books and this one ranks in the top.