Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership

Drive Breakthrough Strategic Thinking Throughout Every Level of your Organization "A gold mine of strategic insight and practical advice, with case examples drawn from Mike Freedman's stellar international consulting career. This book will change your concept of what strategy is and how to make it drive your organization."--Robert A. Lutz, Vice Chairman, Product Development, and Chairman, GM North America, General Motors Corporation "I only wish I'd had this book to guide me years ago when I was named chief executive of the UK's largest (yet failing) transport company. This is a template for every CEO seeking to formulate a new strategy and revitalize tired values."--Sir Peter Thompson, former Chairman, National Freight Company, and UK Businessman of the Year "Mike Freedman brings a holistic approach, deep thinking, and broad practical experience to the subject of strategic leadership. Read this book and you will improve your understanding of strategy and your role in it, wherever you are in the organization."--Sir Bryan Nicholson, Past President, Confederation of British Industry, Chairman, Cookson Group Plc "Every corporate leader faces new challenges. This book presents a thought-provoking, integrated, and proven approach to strategy that meets these imperatives head on, and challenges chief executives, their top teams, and future leaders to benchmark their strategic effectiveness. The book also provides breakthrough concepts and processes to help improve strategic performance, arguably the most important aspect of a top team's work."--From the Introduction Strategic leadership is one of the most used and abused phrases in today's corporate lexicon. The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership removes the theory and guesswork to reveal strategic leadership for what it really is: guiding an organization to establish a framework within which it will make choices to determine its future nature and direction. In this thoughtful, pragmatic book, international strategic advisers Mike Freedman and Benjamin Tregoe draw on their extensive experience with leading consulting firm Kepner-Tregoe. Along with examples of successfully implemented approaches from Hallmark International, British Airways, Lockheed Martin, the Bank of Ireland, and many others, they outline a five-phase plan you can use to: Gather and analyze intelligence, craft a strategic vision, develop implementation plans, take action, and monitor results Secure consistency in strategic decision-making throughout your organization Dodge the currently popular--but potentially fatal--trend toward strategic short-termism As you read these words, your competitors are formulating their own strategies and adopting and adapting your most innovative ideas for their own purposes--to trump your products, steal your customers, and capture your place in the value chain. Your defense? Accept the inevitable obsolescence of your current thinking, formulate and implement a self-renewing strategy, and regain the upper hand in the battle for competitive survival. Today's uncompromising environment leaves you little choice. Every day, with every decision you make, you must improve your firm's strategic performance. Let The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership introduce you to a disciplined approach to creating and implementing results-based strategy, by providing tools and techniques for you and your team to discard outmoded standards, think the unthinkable, and implement a fluid and flexible strategy to drive extraordinary business results.Freedman, Mike is the author of 'Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership' with ISBN 9780071410663 and ISBN 007141066X.