Synopses & Reviews
Advance Praise for Willie Pietersen's Reinventing Strategy
"With today's uncertainties, a sound strategy is not enough for business success. Effective, dynamic leadership is more important than ever in piloting an organization through a constantly shifting environment. In this timely book, Willie Pietersen reveals the profound connections between strategy and leadership, and offers a proven method for strengthening both." -Jim Copeland, Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
"The companies that win tomorrow will be those that generate superior insights today. Willie Pietersen is a master of the process, and in Reinventing Strategy he teaches you how to make it work for your business." -Faith Popcorn, founder, BrainResource Inc., author, EVEolution: The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women
"Take the business savvy of a former CEO, mix in the leading-edge insights of a faculty member at a top business school, garnish generously with crystal-clear writing, and what do you have? Willie Pietersen's Reinventing Strategy-a must for executives in these turbulent times." -Donald C. Hambrick, Samuel Bronfman Professor of Democratic Business Enterprise, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
"Finding ways to transform companies into adaptive organizations able to respond intelligently to an ever-changing environment has become the top priority for business leaders. Reinventing Strategy offers a proven process for doing just that. It is a wonderful mix of theory and practice, plus commonsense reasoning that works-for all the right reasons." -From the Foreword by Bob Johansen, President, Institute for the Future
Review
"With today's uncertainties, a sound strategy is not enough for business success. Effective, dynamic leadership is more important than ever in piloting an organization through a constantly shifting environment. In this timely book, Willie Pietersen reveals the profound connections between strategy and leadership, and offers a proven method for strengthening both." --Jim Copeland, Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
"Relatively few people have the knack for creating business strategies that are truly new and effective. What makes these people special can't be bottled-but in Reinventing Strategy, Willie Pietersen comes close. His Strategic Learning method does more to systemize the process of smart strategy creation than any other approach I've seen." --Faith Popcorn, Author, The Popcorn Report
"Take the business savvy of a former CEO, mix in the leading-edge insights of a faculty member at a top business school, garnish generously with crystal-clear writing, and what do you have? Willie Pietersen's Reinventing Strategy--a must for executives in these turbulent times." --Donald C. Hambrick, Samuel Bronfman Professor of Democratic Business Enterprise, Columbia University, Graduate School of Business
Synopsis
At last-a proven system for developing the strategic innovations every company needs to compete and win
As everyone knows, today's unprecedented rate of business change demands new levels of strategic insight and adaptability. Reinventing Strategy is the first practical, systematic guide to creating an adaptive enterprise, showing how companies around the world are using the Strategic Learning approach to consistently out think, out maneuver, and out perform their competition. As Willie Pietersen explains, companies that aspire to long-term success must develop and implement strategy as part of a continuous four-step cycle-Learn, Focus, Align, Execute-and he offers dozens of provocative anecdotes and case studies, illustrating how to implement it at every level of an organization. Written with unusual clarity, frankness, and wit, Reinventing Strategy will change the way managers everywhere approach their greatest and most important challenge: the need to make strategy into a tool for ongoing corporate renewal.
Synopsis
Reinventing Strategy
Are you prepared to conquer the single greatest leadership challenge facing any corporate executive in the new economy? To compete in today's ever-shifting landscape, you need to drive your company beyond one-time improvement and achieve continual adaptation and renewal. In Reinventing Strategy, the creator of the Strategic Learning process shows how this proven system enables business leaders to repeatedly develop superior insights and transform them into winning strategies.
Unlike many books on business strategy, this completely practical guide combines clear explanations of what your company needs to do with a unique four-step process for getting it done: Learn, Focus, Align, Execute. Refreshingly concrete examples show you how to use Strategic Learning to consistently outthink, outmaneuver, and outperform your competition.
This comprehensive guide features dozens of real-world stories from major companies such as Seagram, Unilever, Sony, and more, vividly illustrating Strategic Learning's effectiveness in do-or-die situations. It also demonstrates practical procedures for mobilizing an organization to capture and act on insights, transform corporate culture, and overcome resistance to change.
The time to adapt and innovate is before change is thrust upon you. Reinventing Strategy supplies the leadership tools and techniques your company needs to stay ahead of the curve and achieve superior performance while everyone else is struggling to cope with unexpected shifts in the competitive environment. No one who leads an organization-or aspires to do so-can afford to ignore this compelling book.
About the Author
WILLIE PIETERSEN was raised in South Africa and received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. After a period spent in the practice of law, he embarked on an international business career. Between 1974 and 1994, Pietersen ran multibillion-dollar divisions of several major global corporations, including Unilever, The Seagram Company, and Sterling Winthrop. In 1998, Pietersen was named Professor of the Practice of Management at the Columbia University Business School. He serves as an advisor and consultant to many global companies, including Sony, Ericsson, Deloitte & Touche, SAP, and The Chubb Corporation, and is Chairman of the Menlo Park-based think tank Institute for the Future.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.
Foreword.
PROLOGUE: The New Leadership Challenge.