Strategic Learning: How to Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights into Competitive Advantage

INTRODUCTION.

The New Competitive Context.

Winning in the New Environment.

Reinventing Strategy with Strategic Learning.

Why This Book?

Getting to Excelling.

PART I WHAT EVERY ORGANIZATION NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT STRATEGY.

CHAPTER 1 The Real Job of Strategy.

What Is Strategy?

What Key Questions Must Strategy Answer for Us?

Choice-Making in Action.

Strategy and Planning Are Different.

Closing the Doing/Excelling Gap.

CHAPTER 2 Defining Competitive Advantage: How Much More Value Do You Deliver Than Your Competitors?

Mind the Gap.

Stretching the Elastic Band.

GM’s Race to the Bottom.

Value Leadership through a Winning Proposition.

What’s Your Winning Proposition?

The Moment of Truth.

PART II APPLYING STRATEGIC LEARNING TO CREATE AN ADAPTIVE ENTERPRISE.

CHAPTER 3 Strategic Learning: Four Key Steps, One Cycle.

Do You Have a Robust Method?

What Were We Thinking?

The Theory of Natural Selection.

Complexity Theory.

Learning Organizations.

Strategy’s New Mission.

The Five Killer Competencies.

The Strategic Learning Cycle.

What We’ve Learned from Deming.

Building Capability through Deliberate Practice.

CHAPTER 4 Learn: Using a Situation Analysis to Generate Superior.

Insights about Your External Environment and Your Own Realities.

The ‘‘Sense and Respond’’ Imperative.

Learning through the Situation Analysis.

Analyzing Customer Needs.

Who Are Our Stakeholders and Why Do They Matter?

Analyzing Competitors.

Interpreting Industry Dynamics.

Taking a Broader View.

Facing Your Own Realities.

Pulling Together the Situation Analysis.

Winning the Battle for Insights.

Doing a Great Situation Analysis: The Rules of Success.

CHAPTER 5 Focus: Clarifying Your Winning Proposition and Identifying Your Key Priorities.

Making Your Strategic Choices.

The Parmenides Fallacy.

Value Proposition versus Winning Proposition.

Where Does Your Vision Fit In?

Delivering Superior Profits.

The Three Bottom Lines.

Your Key Priorities.

How the Girl Scouts Did It.

Deciding What Not to Do.

CHAPTER 6 Align: Mobilizing Your Entire Organization behind Your Strategy.

Leading a Journey.

The Golden Rules of Successful Execution.

Closing the Gaps.

The Business Ecosystem.

Changing an Organization’s Culture.

Avoiding the Values Trap.

CHAPTER 7 Overcoming Resistance to Change and Driving Momentum.

Dealing with the Sources of Resistance.

The Lessons of the Sigmoid Curve.

The Curse of Success.

Launching the Second Curve.

Maximize Participation.

Generate Short-Term Wins.

Deal Directly with Resisters.

Set a Shining Example.

CHAPTER 8 Translating Your Strategy into a Compelling Leadership Message.

What Is Leadership?

Building a Cathedral.

Commander’s Intent.

Who Are the Leaders?

Developing Your Leadership Message.

The Power of Storytelling.

The Need for Repetition.

CHAPTER 9 Execute: Implementing and Experimenting in the Strategic Learning Cycle.

Learning through Experimentation.

Learning from Others.

Learning from Mistakes.

Experiential Learning: The After-Action Review.

Strategic Learning 365 Days a Year.

PART III INTEGRATING STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP.

CHAPTER 10 Leading through a Crisis.

Dealing Successfully with the Unexpected.

Learning Your Way Out of a Crisis.

Building Readiness.

Seizing Opportunities during a Crisis.

The Human Dimension.

CHAPTER 11 Becoming an Integrated Leader.

The Three Domains of Leadership.

Articulating Your Leadership Credo.

The Quest for Self-Knowledge.

The Lifeline Exercise.

Applying Strategic Learning to Yourself.

CONCLUSION.

The 5 Cs: Choices, Clarity, Change, Courage, and Compassion.

The Five Cs.

APPENDIX.

NOTES.

INDEX.