The Mind Of The Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business Paperback – August 1, 1991

When I decided to take a stab at Kenichi Ohmae's 1982 classic "The Mind of the Strategist", I expected it to be a valuable read for practitioners and academics in the field of business strategy. Fact is, it stands out compared with most current writing, and provides evidence that key ideas and themes in the field of strategy stand the test of time.

Ohmae was a 23-year partner with McKinsey in Japan, and his thinking about strategy is clearly influenced both by the successful years of Japanese industry in the seventies and the eighties, and by the methodologies and approaches of McKinsey.

However, if one looks beyond some outdated examples (including "the fastest-growing industries, such as facsimile, office computers, and fast-food"), references to the business landscape in Japan 30 years ago, and some after the fact ill-conceived strategic thinking, this is a superbly written book about key concepts in business strategy, and illustrated with a large amount of anecdotal evidence from Japanese industry.

Indeed, Ohmae takes us through a range of analytical tools (including issue identification and the issue diagram), through four generic strategic approaches (key success factors, relative superiority, innovative initiatives, and strategic degrees of freedom), to the strategic triangle (corporate, customer, and competition), to coping with changes in the environment, and finally to 'foresighted decision making' (which is about bold, but structured and disciplined strategic decision-making).

I enjoyed his discussion about strategy as about marginally beating the competition over time to deliver good, but not stellar ROCE. This perspective has somehow been lost in a world where many investors' favorite investment opportunity appears to be a consumer space winner-takes-all that will lose money every year until late in its life cycle, if ever. My guess is that it would be good for players in digital space to give Ohmae's reflections some thought.

He has also interesting perspectives regarding "hito-kane-mono" (from Japanese: people, money and things), and the need to find a balance. I believe that Ohmae's search for balance is influenced by Japanese culture, but find the concept applicable to organizations in general.

Finally, he offers insights into what strategy work is about in real industry, in which success means persistent work on order intake, revenue growth, market share, and operating margin. Many of us still work in such companies, and I believe that Ohmae's work is more relevant for the typical CEO of a Norwegian oil service company than mostly anything written about strategies for the digital economy.

On a general note, I am enthusiastic about this book because: i) It proves that fundamental ideas and concepts in business strategy have universal validity, across time and space. ii) The book is filled with anecdotal considerations related to what we is currently considered business model design, even if it does not appear to make explicit reference to such concept, which suggests that the field of strategy is making progress in certain well-defined areas of permanent importance.

Ohmae;s signature work has always been on my list of things to read, but I never quite got around to it. Boy was I missing something. Ohmae's book is marketed as a look at japanease business, but it is really the Mind of a McKinsey strategist. I am not sure how Ohmae was able to publish this book, but it is a defacto methodology for formulating strategy and it exposes the key tools and frameworks used by McKinsey.

The book is extremely well written and conversational in tone making complex ideas seem straight forward -- not simple but certainly understandable.

The book covers all aspects of stragtegy from how you shape the problem, conduct the analysis and make decisions. This is a must read for all general managers particularly if your company is hiring outside consultants to do stratgegy.

Now one might think that a book written more than 20 years ago would be outdated and less relevant. This is definately not the case, by focusing on the process, tools and how you apply them Ohmae has written a timeless book that stands up well in the pre and post internet world.

So this is highly recommended, in fact most highly recommended.

Excelente

'The Mind of The Strategist' provides a refreshing perspective on strategy; it focuses on the way a good strategist would think, rather than the model or methodology that he/she would use. The discussion about strategy is carried out by Ohmae in a humane manner, which makes the book both an inspiring & enjoyable read.

Very interesting book!

First published in Japan in 1975, The Mind of the Strategist is a timeless collection of insights about strategic planning. Not the misguided planning exercises practiced in most corporations today, but true strategic planning focused on beating the competition. With a clarity exceeding contemporary strategic advice, Kenichi Ohmae shares the mechanics behind good strategic thinking - taking insights, information, trends, events, situations, and conditions and rearranging them to obtain a relative advantage. This leads to the most profound statement in the book "The sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable a company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors." To obtain a foundational understanding of strategic planning, there is no better book available today.

I'm not currently a strategy consultant but I'm preparing for interviews. Mentors have told me this is their "bible" in strategy consulting. Do yourself a favor and buy it, read it, and implement it into whatever you're doing now. It will increase your performance.

Parts one and three were the most insightful and intriguing. The stratgic planning process was well defined and provided a framework for how to 'think', rather than a guide to planning. Part three, which is about the infamous 3 C's, was too light on content. The high level overview of the 3 C's in this section left me with little information about how to effectively use the 3 C's. Lastly, many of the examples are very outdated. It would be helpful if Omhae updated it to reflect the recent history of the Japanese economy and its impact on their corporations.