The Strategy Book

"The Strategy Book" also offers a comprehensive guide to 31 tried-and-tested tools, models and principles of strategy and management, drawing on McKeown's own experience and the advice of leading strategic thinkers, writers and researchers, both present and past.

This fully updated second edition includes more examples of strategy in action than the previous edition, plus more ideas on sustainability, psychology and behavioral strategy, as well as the author's thoughts on how to combine creativity and entrepreneurship.

So who's this book for? "The Strategy Book" is primarily aimed at leaders and managers who need to think and plan strategically in order to take their business, team, product, or service to the next level. It will also interest business consultants and executive coaches, students of strategy or business, and anyone who's interested in the theories behind strategy.

Importantly, it's a "doing" book. McKeown wants his readers to use "The Strategy Book" as a manual. He fills it with direct questions, challenges and checklists, and the best way to read it is with a pen and paper, a tablet, or a computer at hand, or alongside team members at meetings. You'll get the most out of this book if you're up for doing the work.

The book's structure lends itself to this. It's written in bite-sized chunks, so it's easy to read or study. There are lots of small, self-contained sections, so you can dip in and out of it and turn to individual tools or models when required. This is helpful, since the author covers a huge amount of ground – without a structure, the reader could get lost.

With an MBA and PhD from Warwick Business School, Max McKeown is a British strategy and innovation coach, a best-selling author, and a sought-after public speaker.

He's worked with some of the world's best-known brands, including Pfizer, Topshop and Sony, and has appeared on TV and radio. The first edition of "The Strategy Book" won the Commuter Read at the Chartered Management Institute Book of the Year awards 2013 and was among Amazon's Best Business Books of 2012, the year it was published.

McKeown also wrote "The Innovation Book" and "Adaptability: The Art of Winning in an Age of Uncertainty." You can find a Book Insight podcast of "The Innovation Book" on the Mind Tools site.

So keep listening to hear why it's wise to think first and plan later, why it's vital to keep one eye on the competition, and to hear the five strategic questions any leader or manager must ask.

"The Strategy Book" is split into six parts. The first five parts look at the challenges leaders and managers may face as they design a strategy and put it into practice. These are called: Your strategic self; Thinking like a strategist; Creating your strategy; Winning with strategy; and Making your strategy work.

Each part is divided into a smaller section, of about six to eight pages, focusing on different strategy-related topics. Each of these short sections follows the exact same structure, starting with a description and including a real-life example of how household names like Disney and McDonalds, or lesser known, ambitious companies, put the strategy into action. There's a discussion of how the topic fits into the bigger picture, a checklist against which to measure your success, a list of actions you need to take, a look at potential pitfalls, and a paragraph of related ideas from other writers or experts.

As you heard earlier, this formulaic structure makes it easy to dip in and out of the book or use it as a reference manual when a particular problem arises. But it also makes the book monotonous and disjointed when read in a few sittings or all the way through at once. We also find the author's star rating for each topic unnecessary, confusing and a touch gimmicky.

Part Six contains the strategist's toolkit, which offers a snapshot of key tools, models or principles and ways to apply them. The toolkit is succinct and precise, with just two pages or less per tool, including charts or diagrams. If you're familiar with the tools, this may be all you need, but other readers may want more information and more examples from the business world of the models in action, and may need to search the Internet or trawl through McKeown's extensive bibliography.

Let's take a closer look at some of the ideas in this book, starting with a simple but valuable piece of advice: think before you plan.

It's all too easy to race ahead. Time is of the essence, your rivals are closing in fast, and those opportunities for growth won't be around forever. You need to come up with a plan, and then take action. But if you haven't done enough thinking first, you could end up hurtling off down the wrong path, with disastrous consequences.

Thinking about strategy involves spending time exploring trends and possibilities, and letting go of fixed ideas. It's about examining what worked before and what backfired. And it's about experimenting, playing with ideas, tapping into creativity, and giving imaginations free rein. We often come up with our best ideas when we're playing and when there's no pressure, no fixed agenda, and no risk of looking foolish for making mistakes.

So make sure you put thinking time in the diary, both in your personal schedule and that of your team, department or organization, McKeown says. Involve a range of people in the thinking process – employees of different ranks and roles, as well as customers or clients. And bring in external consultants to examine your thinking and challenge your assumptions, if your budget allows.

We really like the author's emphasis on thinking before planning and, while it's clear some businesses have more time to spend on thinking than others, we believe everyone can prioritize reflection occasionally, no matter how limited their time. The importance of stepping back, looking at the big picture, and allowing time for creativity is a recurring theme in this book, and, while there's a fair amount of repetition, we think it's an important idea to drive home.

Let's now look at what the author says about the need to keep looking over your shoulder at what your competition is doing.

The best strategy isn't created in a vacuum; it's created against a backdrop of your rivals' current actions and likely future actions. Leaders need to notice how their competitors are innovating, and find out what they're doing better than the rest of the market.

To do this, you need to shop in your rivals' shops, either physically or online, buy their products, and use their services. You don't need to copy your competitors, but you can learn from them. You can adapt their ideas, combine them with yours, or do something completely different so you stand out from the crowd.

McKeown suggests creating what he calls a "competition wall," where you stick up your rivals' logos and pin up pictures of their products and services. Once it's up, gather your team around and swap ideas about what your rivals are doing right and wrong, and what you'd do to improve their products if you worked for those companies.

We like this idea of a competition wall, since visual aids and images can help spark creativity. Putting your competitors' products on a desk or a table and getting your team to gather around for a brainstorm would also work well. Trying to outwit the competition can energize your team. But remember, not everyone responds well to the idea of competitors snapping at their heels, and it's primarily the role of the leader to keep an eye on rivals.

Many of the ideas in the first five parts of the book are interrelated and flow on one from another. You'll hear how to set your intention and choose your direction, how to create new markets, grow your business, go global without going broke, and how to make sure your strategy leads to success, not failure.

Let's now look at the toolkit that comes in Part Six of the book. Here, you'll find a whole array of well-known and lesser-known principles, models and frameworks from some of the world's leading thinkers on management and strategy. You can find many of these on the Mind Tools site as well, under Strategy Tools.

They include: Michael Porter's five forces of competition, a model that offers a clear view of the buyers or customers, the existing competitors, the new entrants, and the new products and suppliers that may impact any business; the Boston Consulting Group's growth share matrix, which helps organize products by market growth and market share so you can target investment; Henry Mintzberg's deliberate and emergent strategy, which looks at strategy as a mixture of what you plan and what happens that's not part of the plan; and the popular SWOT analysis model of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

There's a diagram with each one and a "How to use" section, where McKeown mentions companies that are using the tool. This helps bring the tools to life, but we'd have liked more in-depth examples from the business world, and the descriptions are so short that some readers may find them a bit superficial.

We haven't got time to look at all the tools, so we'll focus on the first and perhaps simplest of the tools in the book: the five basic strategy questions.

Too often, the word "strategy" makes us roll our eyes. It can sound like jargon or management speak and can conjure up something nebulous, something hard to pin down. But McKeown breaks the term down so everyone can understand and get on board with it.

He says strategy is about identifying where we want to end up. It's about finding the best, most efficient, and most effective route from A to B, using the means we have at our disposal. It's the answer to five straightforward questions: Where are we? Where do we want to go? What changes have to be made? How should changes be made? And how shall we measure progress? As a strategist, it's your job to get answers to these questions, and you do that by asking many more questions.

To find out where your company stands, speak to people within the organization, to customers and clients, and to suppliers, and search the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and trade magazines. How is your business positioned in terms of pricing, quality and originality? What do the numbers say? What's your ranking? And what's your brand's reputation? Do people love you and want you to succeed, or do they dislike you and want you to fail?

To explore where you want to go and how to get there, ask if you're growing or shrinking and what the future projections are. What tensions are there within the organization? Is there an appetite for change and if so, what kind of change? Where are the opportunities for growth and who's moving faster than you?

We agree with McKeown that these basic questions should be part of the armory of every strategist and strategic thinker. They're not rocket science, but they'll help give your strategy solid foundations, and will increase your odds of moving in the right direction.

McKeown does a lot of the work for us in Part Six of this book. He offers a concise introduction to some of the best-known strategy tools, frameworks and models, and compiles the wisdom of thought leaders in strategy and management. Many readers will have come across some or all of the tools before, but it helps to have them all in one place and it's a valuable resource for anyone studying strategy.

Dip in and out of the "The Strategy Book" and you'll find it an easy-to-use, practical guide that'll help you devise and implement successful strategies, change tack when needed, and respond well to the changing business landscape. Read it in one go and you may find the writing dry, the structure formulaic, and the content repetitive.

But however you use it, we've no doubt you'll come away from this book with a better understanding of strategy, an in-depth knowledge of the theories behind it, some great tips on how to lead your team or your company in the right direction, and an awareness of the potential pitfalls and challenges.

"The Strategy Book" by Max McKeown is published by Pearson.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.