Product Description: "Strategic Thinking: A Practical Approach to Strategy" takes the reader step by step through a strategic planning cycle. It poses penetrating questions about business strategy. By answering them and thinking through the important issues that they raise, the reader will be in a better position to give their organization a sense of direction and write a clear, focused strategic plan.
Strategic Planning Class Students in the Strategic Planning class at Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary are finding the question/prompt sheet format easy to follow as they do their analysis of organizations. However, the sections on economy are difficult to apply to the Filipino setting and to nonprofit organizations. Because of the beginning emphasis on thinking skills, it would have been helpful to include an activity to discover or measure the reader's personal assessment of strategic thinking skills.
Strategic Thinking by Simon Wootton and Terry Horne In Strategic Thinking, Simon Wootton and Terry Horne teach step-by-step the thinking skills required for sound strategic planning. The authors set out questions to ask and teach how to learn to formulate strategies and write clear and concise strategic plans. The steps taught are easy to apply in the real world. The authors used a very practical approach, and wrote in simple language. The book also has a CD ROM with practical examples that can be used as templates to facilitate the formulation of strategies.
The book teaches a nine step process covering the gathering of information, formulating ideas and planning action. The gathering of information involves an analysis of what is changing, carrying out an audit and reflecting on what one knows. In formulating ideas, one is required to predict where the organisation is headed, decide where it should be going and take care of obstacles to achieving organisational objectives. Planning action involves thinking creatively about alternative courses of action, evaluating their feasibility and making decisions on implementation of the plans.
The book enables me to carry out a systematic process of arriving at optimum plans and strategies for my organisation. I am now aware of the full range of issues to be considered in a systematic thinking process by examining a set of relevant questions and answering them objectively before formulating strategies and writing clear and concise strategic plans.
Very good book, plus... This is a very good book. In addition, I recommend "Strategic Organizational Change" by Michael Beitler.
A handy, no-frills guide to kick-start your planning! Of so many business planning books, which I hold in high regard, this one is the simplest to read and follow, and yet still packed with useful tools and powerful tips. To some extent, I would consider it to be a no-frills, straight-to-the-point, hands-on kind of planning book.
In a nut shell, it provides a step by step approach, with a total of 9 steps, and involves 3 critical stages: gathering information, formulating ideas, and planning actions.
In fact, it has many thought-provoking Prompt Questions and clearly-defined Checklists to help you execute your thinking and planning work - starting from scanning the environment (to find out what's out there), measuring your organisational health, creating more options, right up to implementing an action plan with a monitoring system, using Gantt Charts. These unique features are intended to stimulate and guide all your thinking processes, with each of the nine steps involving a different thinking process.
As a mater of fact, by the time you have gone through all the Prompt Questions and completed all the Checklists, you would have already thought through analytically, numerically, reflectively, predictively, imaginatively, visually, creatively, critically, empathetically, ethically, pragmatically and politically. Also, they have been structured in such a way that you would have developed strategic conversations skills with your people across all levels of the organisation, in the course of the planning exercise.
From a strategic thinking standpoint, this book really scores high marks from me, in spite of its simplicity. When reading this book, it reminds me of two other good business planning books with practical "hands-on" features: `Breakaway Planning,' by Paul Levesque, whose book I have also reviewed earlier. In comparison, `Breakaway Planning' gives a more detailed treatment. The other is `Putting It All Together: A Guide to Strategic Thinking,' by William Rothschild, whose book also gives a more detailed treatment.
This book also comes with a CD-Rom, which provides a business case example, using the 9-step approach.
My only `adverse' comment about the book - it would have been more complete if the authors have crafted a global flow chart at the end pages, showing all the 9 steps in sequence within the 3 prescribed stages, in concert with all the applicable thinking processes and resulting action possibilities. This would have been a superb feature for more visually-oriented readers, like me.
In summing up, if you do not have much time to read, and want a proven tool to help kick-start your planning, this one is for you.
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