By Sandeep Das.
From the bestselling author of ‘How Business Storytelling Works’.
The author has held leadership positions in management consulting and FMCG for over 15 years.
The word strategy comes from the Greek word ‘strategos’, meaning a general in command of an army.
The Art of War written in 400 BC by Sun Tzu, is said to be one of the best works on military strategy.
x Know when to fight and when not to fight
x Appear weak when strong and strong when weak
x Know your strengths and weaknesses
are some of the takeaways from The Art Of War
According to a Harvard Business Review Article, ‘Strategy is making trade-offs in competing. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.’
The author Sandeep Das thinks of strategy like a three-part story. A problem, a tension and a resolution.
He writes about Roger Federer’s strategy and the strategy for baseball from the movie Moneyball.
He notes some of the famous strategists of all time – Chanakya, Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Genghis Khan, Yelu Chucai, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Sandeep points out that competition from all sides is making companies irrelevant sooner. He points out the liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s bad move in getting into airlines. And how Blockbuster did not buy Netflix when it had the chance. He recommends the Netflix program ‘Painkillers’, which exposes the underbelly of the consulting firms’ malpractices.
The author covers the two-by-two grid, The Johari Window, an analytics maturity curve, and an S curve. He discusses strategic thinking frameworks and scope and boundary conditions for projects. In later chapters, he discusses the role of artificial intelligence in strategy, along with some case studies. He touches upon the golden triangle principle to tap into the Indian consumer or the emerging marketing consumer. He discusses benchmarking all aspects of work, behavioural change models, approaches for process re-design.
He gives what he calls his cheat code for strategy professionals, which outlines the ideal mindset of a strategy professional. The book comes with extensive notes at the end.
Link to the book on Amazon – https://www.amazon.in/Why-Your-Strategy-Sucks-Best-selling/dp/0143467425/
Thank you, Penguin Random House, for the review copy.
