Customer Reviews

The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning Strategies

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

 

 

Unlike other reviewers I found this book to represent an interesting insight into where companies need to go if they are to remain competitive. Coveney's analysis is both deep and full of solid anecdotal evidence of the kind that executives should see as representing a genuine reality. The author doesn't gloss over the inherent difficulties attached to bridging the strategy gap and therein lies its weakness. While the book makes solid suggestions about the next step forward, it could have done more to recognise the real issues required to execute against its ideas. In this sense, the notion of CPM, which at one time seemed like a truly great idea, is likely to be relegated to management theory rather than practice.

Have you ever wondered why, after having spent yet another grueling, general manager-mandated week of offsite strategic planning meetings, nothing has changed? The Strategy Gap delivers some real "Aha! So that's what went wrong!" insights I hadn't thought of before. The authors also propose a framework to help companies improve their performance management processes and technology systems and include real-life examples from companies who are putting these suggestions to work. This book is the start of a dialog that the executive team of every Iarge company should be having today. I found this book very useful and I think others will, too.

Companies have spent decades and millions to take costs out of manufacturing and time out of transaction processing. Now, the authors of "The Strategy Gap" illustrate how companies and their CFOs can take inefficiencies out of planning, budgeting, and reporting processes, and improve corporate management effectiveness in a turbulent economy. I like this book (and the online Appendix!) because it acknowledges the complexities of improving business performance management but provides stepping stones and tools for overcoming them a little at a time.

I would expect that the authors of a book that purports to tell companies how to successfully execute their strategy would have a track record of doing the same with their own companies. Apparently that is not a safe assumption. The company that sponsored these authors was acquired last year for a fraction of what the company was worth five years earlier (interestingly enough, that was just about the time two of the authors became senior executives at the company). Save your money and skip over this 200 page piece of marketing material for a failed company.

The biggest problem with this book is the distance between the beginning and the end.