Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action

Today's business leaders face a fast-moving and brutally competitive environment – a world where global competition and technology have ushered in a new era of complexity and speed. But one business consultant, with an enviable client list (Microsoft, IBM, and GE among them) and a reputation for cutting through complicated business processes to find simple solutions.  John Spence says most of the problems he sees are crucial, but not complex ones.  Author John Spence wants his new book to make those crucial problems, easy ones that are quickly solved. 

AWESOMELY SIMPLE: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action (Jossey-Bass; hardcover; September 8, 2009) examines the issues that Spence hears time and again when he is out on the road 220 days a year, working with companies to figure out how to solve their biggest problems. It offers a strategy to address six key business functions that currently eat up way too much time.  

The six strategies – Vivid Vision, Best People, Robust Communication, Sense of Urgency, Disciplined Execution and Extreme Customer Focus – are what Spence says are at the core of every successful company or organization.  “The book,” writes Spence, “attempts to make managing these six key functions awesomely simple – so simple, that instead of spending 80 percent of your time trying to put out completely avoidable fires, and just 20 percent of your time trying to grow, innovate and differentiate your business – you are able to do the reverse.” 

AWESOMELY SIMPLE provides the roadmap for applying these simple strategies and building lasting business success.   “Almost every business person I meet and consult with admits that they don’t focus keenly enough on the six key areas.  I’d like this book to make them so easy, that they don’t HAVE to focus more time and energy there but can move their business to the next level.