The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership [Hardcover]

Mike Freedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2002

"The strategy process Mike Freedman so ably discusses has been put to work at La-Z-Boy. You will come away from The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership better equipped to not only think more incisively about future competitive advantage, but your organization will have greater strategic focus at every level, beginning with the top management team."--Gerald L. Kiser, President & Chief Executive Officer, La-Z-Boy Incorporated

A powerful new approach to strategy setting from a worldwide leader in strategic thinking

Written by a leading consultant at Kepner-Tregoe, one of the world's most respected strategy consulting groups, The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership goes far beyond most other strategy books to offer business strategists an integrated five-phase model for setting and implementing strategy.

Proven effective at a diverse range of organizations worldwide, the model provides executives with a powerful framework for assessing and tweaking current strategy, or charting a bold new strategic course.

Encompassing all the critical phases of the strategic process, The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership shows readers how to:

• Gather and analyze strategic intelligence
• Craft a strategy
• Develop an implementation plan
• Take action
• Monitor progress and more

Throughout, key points are illustrated with case examples from a diverse range of organizations, including Hallmark, Hong Kong and China Gas, Lockheed Martin, Savoy Hotel Group, and others.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

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.

About the Author

Mike Freedman is president of the worldwide strategy practice of consulting company Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. Freedman has lived and worked in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, and has written numerous articles on strategy. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Strategic Direction.

Benjamin B. Tregoe is the co-founder of Kepner-Tregoe, Inc., a management-consulting firm with headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Top Management Strategy, Vision in Action, The Culture of Success, the management classic The Rational Manager, and its sequel The New Rational Manager.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007141066X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071410663
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 3.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-crafted book on strategic formulation, with good case studies!, January 30, 2003

By 

Lee Say Keng "KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURER/TECHNOLOGY... (Ho Chi Minh City/Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership (Hardcover)

I have always been impressed by the work of the Kepner-Tregoe team because their methodologies really work.

My first encounter with their work was the mastering - and application - of their Problem Solving & Decision Making (PSDM)strategies in the late 70's/early 80's, while I was a practising engineer. Subsequent fruitful encounters include reading - and assimilating - Tregoe's Vision at Work and Top Management Strategy (both of which are great works) when I was a General Manager.

This book should have been available when I was still working in the corporate world. Anyway, I am very pleased to have bought and perused this wonderful book, which I will now add to my Strategic Thinking and Strategic Leadership bookshelf.

I particularly enjoyed digesting the authors' practical approach to strategy formulation, which has been extensively covered in the book. The attendant case studies - field-tested - have been well selected and the process of working out their integrated model to help readers to understand - and eventually apply - has also been well crafted.

I also like their way of posing pertinent questions to think through some of the process steps.

All practising managers must get hold of this book. In terms of depth and breadth in the strategic thinking process, as well as the clarity in writing and presentation, I would rate this book in the same genre as Michel Robert's strategic thinking books. Across the board, the authors' writing in the book is crisp and succinct, and I really appreciate authors who write this way.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effective Strategic Thinking, March 5, 2003

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership (Hardcover)

I have long believed that any organization without a cogent strategy is vulnerable. Too much strategic thinking these days is driven, in my opinion, by a desire to appeal to Wall Street investment bankers and analysts or by a dot.bomb-fueled fear of failure.

Strategy is a two-headed prong. It is creative enough to fashion a vision, while being disciplined enough to drive the vision into reality.

Mike Freedman defines the word as the framework of choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization. It is a definition I like. The word framework establishes boundaries and scope. Choices are about products, services, markets and capabilities. Nature describes the character of any organization. Direction is the organizations course determined by choices about future products, services, customers and markets.

Notice that a decision is not strategic simply because it is long-term or involves mega-dollar expenditures. While these can be made within the strategic framework, only those decisions that change the framework are strategic.

Freedman says there are three critical aspects to a strategy:

1. A strategic vision is based on facts, informed assumptions and critical what-if thinking.
2. The vision must be communicated throughout the organization.
3. Its implementation must be monitored.

I particularly enjoyed the section on Strategic Master Project Planning. Freedman says the purpose of master project plan is to assess the necessary strategic initiatives, integrate the existing operation projects, identify project priority and interdict those projects which are out of line with the strategic vision.

This is a great book. As always, organizations that desire to survive and thrive will have to mast the art of strategy creation and implementation. The Kepner-Tregoe five phase model on which Freedman bases this book is a great foundation for organizations and managers who wish to begin the journey.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but it could have been better, April 22, 2006

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership (Hardcover)

Strategic leadership certainly requires discipline, and it clearly is an art form. But it is not as complicated as the authors would have their readers believe. Furthermore, the 5-phase model for strategy formulation and implementation that the authors claim to have developed is not unique. It's the same model just about any entrepreneur who writes a sound business plan uses to start a new business, and entrepreneurs have been around since before the authors were born.

I think the book was written adequately well, and I recommend that entrepreneurs who have read a few books on how to write a business plan read this book, too. I would have liked the book better if the authors had first described what a company founder goes through when he or she practices strategic leadership in starting his company. Then explain what the company founder (or his or her replacement) must do to monitor the strategy, renew it, or possibly change it. Then, and only then, discuss real-world examples about how it is hard to monitor strategy, renew it, or possibly change it. I did not like the way the authors sprinkled real-world examples throughout the text. I think they should have been included in a separate section of the book.

If the authors had titled the book "The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership at Large Multi-National Companies," then I would have rated it higher. Strategic leadership at large companies is complicated because of their size, and because their leaders are probably not all that competent at thinking strategically. It is hard to implement strategic change in something that is old and big, especially if one hasn't been at the helm for long.

Probably the most important thing I learned from reading this book is that many people enjoying the role of CEO in large multi-national businesses hire consultants to educate them on things they would already know if they had ever started their own successful small business. I would not have learned this if the authors had kept to describing strategic leadership rather than the problems large companies face regarding their strategic leadership. This book is worth a read, but it is not a masterpiece.