Tag archives for strategy - Page 2
Book review – Strategy Bites Back by Henry Mintzberg
Strategy Bites Back: It Is A Lot More, And Less, Than You Ever Imagined by Henry Mintzberg My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this as pre-reading before studying Strategy with the Open University. It was very clear and easy to read, explained things ownderfully, made me laugh in places, and was genuinely useful in getting my head round what strategy actually is. The book is a series of short articles, put into language most people can read rather than the drier academic style or cringeworthy business speak that these sort of books are often written in. This is a plain english text that works. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand strategy, read this before trying anything else (and as a second reading I would go for Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why…
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Book Review – Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
If you have to read about strategy this is a very good place to start your understanding of strategy. I've got several years of experience in government doing strategy and I've studied it academically as well. So I'm applying a wide evidence base, and this is a good book about strategy. This is the first book that I've seriously highlighted, mainly because it struck a chord with me and seemed to be full of sensible advice about the characteristics of both good and bad strategy. I can see myself using some of the content at work to help me and my colleagues develop better strategies and avoid some of the pitfalls. Unlike a lot of the strategy books I have read this one is intended for a wide audience and has very readable language (some of the academic works disappear…
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Another side of the COIN
I ran my game of being an Afghan farmer "The Other Side of the COIN" at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group's (CLWG) annual conference yesterday afternoon. This was its second outing, you can see my onside report from the first run here. Since the last outing the game has developed further to address some of the comments that the players made then. In particular I had a set of individual objective cards to drive some behaviours and give the players something to focus on that was essentially different each time the game gets played (and also makes the farmers all slightly different from each other, there is a danger that they all do the same thing). The other advantage of the cards is that it stops a purely economic rationality setting in immediately and just converting to grow poppy (because the…
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Strategy Study Notes
I am currently (Aug 2011) studying module B301 "Making Sense of Strategy" with the Open University. This is a final year (third year, level 3) undergraduate module which forms a core part of their BA in Business Studies. I have an exam in mid-October 2011, so I thought that rather than use index cards (as I did when I did my at the University of Glasgow (1989-1992)) I would stick all the core ideas and other facts to cram for the exam into some wiki pages, which I could then edit and refine much more easily. Also I will probably then convert all it into something easily printable to re-read as many times as possible prior to the exam. So here are my Strategy Study Notes. Related articles Library Services Open Day - Thursday 11th August 2011 " University of Glasgow Library () Stakeholder Management…
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Collaboration
For some people collaboration is a dirty word, with connotations from those who collaborated with the nazis in WW2. Not for me though, I think that it makes for a generally better outcome than trying to do everything oneself. However it does have its downsides. You often need to compromise, other people may have more time than you and drive things faster than you'd like, and perhaps not in the direction you'd choose. That said, good collaboration gives you more than you could have achieved on your own. Where has this sudden enthusiasm for collaboration come from I hear you think. Well its not a sudden enthusiasm, but a timely articulation. My OU course (B301 Making Sense of Strategy) has just entered the collaborative block. Do for the next four weeks or so we need to work as a group…