Strategic Learning: How to Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights into Competitive Advantage Reviews
Strategic Learning: How to Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights into Competitive Advantage
How to use Strategic Learning to rapidly respond to change and gain a sustainable advantage over your competitors
What's even harder than creating a breakthrough strategy? Making it stick. As companies are fighting to survive in a tough economy, this new book by Willie Pietersen demonstrates the power of the Strategic Learning process, a four-step dynamic cycle guaranteed to create and sustain winning performance. Adopted by a wide range of corporations and not-for-profit organizations, the Strategic Learning process builds on eight years of practicing, adapting and honing the original concepts Pietersen first introduced in Reinventing Strategy to explain how organizations can generate superior insights about their customers and competitors, craft a Winning Proposition, focus on a vital few key priorities, create buy-in throughout the organization and achieve success – again and again.
- Teaches organizations to make smarter decisions that help them win customers and earn superior profits
- Explains how to instill a culture of openness, learning, and courage that can face and respond to the constantly changing business environment
- Is a tool that can benefit leaders at all levels, in organizations both large and small, global and domestic, for-profit and not-for-profit
- Author Willie Pietersen, a former president of Tropicana and Seagram USA, is a professor of management at Columbia Business School, and the author of Reinventing Strategy, from Wiley
Strategic Learning shows you how your business or nonprofit organization can develop better, more effective strategies for long-term competitive advantage.
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P. Van Der Westhuizen "Pieter", 
Stephen Newman, and 
Mark Gandy - Missouri are discussing.
Mark Gandy - Missouri 10:55 am on December 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Actionable, Practical, Framework-driven Strategic Planning,
I like reading books on strategy and this one stands out because the author’s framework, based on years of experience, is pratical and easy to follow.
At the heart of Mr. Pietersen’s strategic framework are four core activities:
1. Learning (as in assessment)
2. Focus (what needs to be done)
3. Align (right people, process, and metrics)
4. Execute (working the plan)
The above process is just that–an ongoing process that never ends.
There are so many gems in this book, and it’s hard to drawn attention to just a few, but let me try:
- The author does a great job at explaining the differences between planning and strategy and how the two connect. Strategy first, planning afterwards according to the author.
- The value/cost gap … excellent discussion along with examples. GM’s value/cost gap is tight compared to Toyota/Honda.
- Others include the Sigmoid Curve, compounding through focus, and so many more. I particularly appreciated the discussion about McDonald’s “Plan to Win” strategy. A Google search will give you more details about this process at the Wharton School Publishing website.
Consider reading this book with a pad and pen. There’s a lot here so you will reap the most benefits by taking notes along the way. Then, I’d suggest reading a second time to determine the specifics you wish to apply in your organization.
The author states this book stands on its own, but I will still be buying his first book on the same subject.
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Stephen Newman 11:55 am on December 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The best book about strategy that you can read today,
Willie Pietersen has written a book that is big in ambition and scope and small in number of pages. I work in the field of Executive Development and have had the pleasure of meeting many professors of strategy and leadership at leading universities, worldwide. No one matches Willie’s passion and expertise for getting across the essential job of the leader, namely, to lead strategically and do that by developing strategies that galvanize all employees to align behind those vital few things that make the biggest difference. You can read ten different books about strategy but you will be better off reading Willie’s book ten times since the challenge he presents is one of putting his ideas into practice and then leading in such a way that the carefully crafted strategy comes alive for everyone as a motivating and convincing story. It how to gain that conviction across the entire organization that Willie truly excels at. Strategy for him proves itself in the actions that an organization takes to create value for customers and sharehiolders and not the PowerPoint slides that distill that strategy into bullet points. When you read ‘Strategic Learning’ the first time (and the second and third times as well,) you will be inspired to get to work right away at leading your organization to achieve excellence and you will be abundantly equipped to do so.
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P. Van Der Westhuizen "Pieter" 12:19 pm on December 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Excellent Strategy process,
Excellent, practical, process for analysing real world situations and deciding what to focus on and how
to execute. It probably takes a few rounds of execution to
get it working smoothly in the organisation.
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