Customer Reviews

All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Breakthrough Strategy [Hardcover]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All the Right Moves

Markides provides a cohesive and comprehensive guide to crafting breakthrough strategy for ANY organization. The basic premise of his book is that "superior strategy is all about finding and exploiting a unique strategy in the company's business while at the same time searching for new strategic positions on a continuing basis." He organizes his materials as follows:

Part I How to Create a Unique Strategic Position

* How to decide what your business is

* How to decide who your customers and what to offer to them

* How to "play the game"

* How to identity and secure strategic assets and capabilities

* How to create the right organization environment

* How to develop a superior strategic position

Part II How to Prepare for Strategic Innovation

* How strategic positions develop

* How to evaluate and respond to strategic innovation

* How to take a dynamic view of strategy

In the final chapter, Markides concedes that "designing a successful strategy is a never-ending quest. Even the most successful companies must continually question the basis of their business and the assumptions underlying their 'formula for success.' (In fact, in one way or another, this is what most successful companies have done to get where they are.). New who/what/how positions are constantly popping up around the mass market, and established companies must be on the lookout for them. Like a modern-day Christopher Columbus, each company must set out to explore its industry's evolving terrain, searching for new and unexploited strategic positions."

In this brilliant book, Markides explains HOW.

This is a mindsetting book. In strategy one needs to ask the right questions to get the right answers. If you want to know what questions to ask then have a read. This is a well written, excellently structured book that should be on the must list of any manager that is formulating strategy. If you thought defining what is strategy is difficult then what about making decisions on What to offer, Who to target and How to do it. It's this sort of simple revealing answers that one finds in this book. It is simply excellent.

All the Right Moves grapples with the issues which form the essence of the strategic management field. Professor Markides provides readers with a landscape for strategy which covers: 1) positioning, 2) business system interdependence, and 3) dynamics of competition. Positioning is recouched in an easy to understand and apply framework based on a new Who-What-How combination. An important message is that positioning is only part of the story. Once position is determined, management must coordinate a complex system of interrelated and interdependent activities which typically extend beyond our cognitive limits of bounded rationality. Further, once these activities are coordinated for one position, the firm cannot stand still. Competitive dynamics erode away any advantage over time, and therefore firms must continuously question their positioning . I whole-heartedly recommend this refreshing and thought provoking book to managers and academics alike.

Markides argues:

"The essence of strategy is to choose the one position that your company will claim as its own. A strategic position is simply the sum of a company's answers to these three questions: Who should I target as customers? What products or services should I offer them? How should I do this? ... Ultimately, strategy is all about making choices, [to achieve] a distinctive strategic position ... The most common source of strategic failure is the failure to make clear and explicit choices in each of these three dimensions."

In itself, the statement is simple, even obvious. But, as he points out, many companies fail to make these explicit choices.

The value of the book lies in how the author works through these propositions. The advice is good common sense, laced with valuable insights. The language is clear and simple. The approach is systemic - the author is as concerned with how all the elements fit together within a dynamic market as with the elements themselves. Each chapter ends with a good summary of the arguments.

Even highly complex and highly dynamic strategies rest on these simple foundations. The book therefore provides both an excellent guide for those new to wrestling with strategy and excellent 'mental furniture' with which to approach more complex formulations.

Markides is a professor at the London Business School. The basic idea in this excellent strategy book is as follows:

STRATEGIC POSITIONING is simply the sum of a company's answers to three questions:

> WHO should I target as customers?
> WHAT products or services should I offer them?
> HOW can I best deliver these products and services to these customers?

Strategy is all about making tough choices in these three dimensions (who, what, and how). Remember that deciding what NOT to do is just as important as deciding what to do...

The next issue is then to construct the appropriate organizational environment that will support the choices made. Also in this area, Markides contributes with a refreshingly clear and practical approach.

Markides argues that even the best of strategies will only have a limited life. Thus, companies must continually evaluate their performance and position in order to be able to quickly create and colonize new strategic positions. Strategy is a dynamic concept - not static. A very practical approach to innovate strategic thinking is to keep starting the process at different points: who/what/how, who/how/what, what/who/how, what/how/who, how/what/who, how/what/who, and finally how/who/what.

Thus, The marketing philosophy always starts externally at the customer (who?) and works backwards towards solutions (what?), and finally adapts the firm's delivery system (how?). But a strong trend during the last decade has been on the internal perspective on core competences, such as procurement or production. This method means that we start with own unique capabilities in the delivery system (how?), which then is translated into solutions (what?) and finally customers (who?). Radical innovation often is created this way, e.g. the "walkman". In practice of business development, we usually have to work in both directions.

This book is not a dry academic's dusty words. Markides uses a wealth of case stories on strategic positions. Being a Dane, I find it very nice indeed that the companies cited often are of European origin.

Nirmalya Kumar's brilliant book "Marketing as Strategy" (2004) expands on Markides' ideas in this book. They both are indebted to professor Derek Abell for the original concept presented in the landmark strategy book: "Defining the business" (1980).

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

This is one of the best written strategy books I've ever come across. Simple, clear, with lots of real case examples and a systematic approach to crafting a winning strategy. What makes it really supreme over other textbooks is that most of the propositions put forward, seem both plausible and feasible. A real masterpiece.

He presents strategy making in a refreshingly simple way and helps the uninitiated gain an insight to the business world.You do not have to be a strategy Guru to see the wisdom in what he advocates!

This book is written like the typical HBR article. I have to say that i don't like their streamlined way of writing. Everyone writes in the same way with the help of ghost writers. So with this bias I've read this book. It is actually very good. The author has a great ability to boil down some strategic management concepts to something very simple. He talks about strategy as who-what-how. So simple, but also powerful. When you start thinking of whether the three components are reinforcing each other it is so easy to spot weaknesses in companies' strategies. Excellent. He also talks about strategic innovation which is about innovating the who-what-how so as to create a new business. The author's pet example is Nestle, the leading manufacturer of instant coffee (the stuff the Brits love to drink). They created the Nespresso system - a perfect example of strategic innovation. (The book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant also deals with strategic innovation, but in a much inferior way.) I can really recommend the current book for an easy read on strategic management.

The author succeeds in structuring a really complex subject in few simple, but nonetheless effective, steps.
The book results in being a valuable tool to tackle company strategy redesign without getting entangled in too complex processes that lead nowhere.
Moreover, it clearly states which roles are involved, how and when during the process; giving insight to avoid typical pitfalls that often hamper strategy redefining.

After reviewing quite a few books on the subject, this is probably one of the best / concise books on the topic. It is not going to be easy, but it explains the process and it's commitments ... can't miss it !