Chapter Supplement

References for Chronic Problems with Strategy

This page provides the references for the quotes in Figure I.1 from page 2 of The Emergent Approach (reproduced here).  

For more quotes about Chronic Strategy Problems click here.

 

REFERENCES FOR FIGURE I.1

(KL= kindle location)

Rumelt RP. Evaluation of Strategy: Theory and Models. Strateg Manag New View Bus Policy Plan. Published online 1979:196- 212.

Pinchot G. Intrapreneuring. Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Organization to Become an Entrepreneur. New York: Harper & Row; 1985.

Porter ME. What Is Strategy? Harv Bus Rev. Published online November 1, 1996. Accessed July 10, 2021. hbr.org/1996/11/what-is-strategy

Hamel G. Strategy as Revolution. Harvard Business Review; 1996.

Van der Heijden K. Scenarios: The Art of the Strategic Conversation. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons; 2005.

Hambrick DC, Fredrickson JW. Are You Sure You have a Strategy? Acad Manag Exec. 2001;15(4):48-59.

Collis DJ, Rukstad MG. Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? Harv Bus Rev. 2008;86(4):82-90.

Rumelt R. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Profile books; 2011.

Witt D. Only 14% of Employees Understand Their Company’s Strategy and Direction. Blanchard LeaderChat. Published May 21, 2012. Accessed December 19, 2016.
leaderchat.org/2012/05/21/only-14-of-employees-understand-theircompanys-strategy-and-direction/

Kenny G. A List of Goals Is Not a Strategy. Harv Bus Rev. Published online November 19, 2014. Accessed July 10, 2021. hbr.org/2014/11/a-list-of-goals-is-not-a-strategy

Sull D, Eisenhardt KM. Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2015.

Leinwand P, Mainardi, Cesare. Creating A Strategy That Works. Published online February 10, 2016. Accessed July 10, 2021.
forbes.com/sites/strategyand/2016/02/10/creating-a-strategy-that-works

Vermeulen F. Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies. Harv Bus Rev. Published online November 8, 2017. Accessed July 10, 2021.
hbr.org/2017/11/many-strategies-fail-because-theyre-not-actually-strategies

Bradley C, Hirt M, Smit S. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds. John Wiley & Sons; 2018.

Sull D, Sull С, Yoder J. No one knows your strategy-Not even your top leaders. Strateg Agil Proj. Published online 2018:7.

Carroll GR, Sørensen JB. Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage. Columbia University Press; 2021. (KL401)

 

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES FOR CHRONIC PROBLEMS WITH STRATEGY

McKeown L. 10 Questions to Jumpstart Your Strategic Planning Process.
Published online August 13, 2013:
inc.com/les-mckeown/jumpstart-your-strategic-planning-process
Sometime in the next two weeks—and certainly by next month—Tens of thousands of businesses, large and small, will have begun their strategic planning process for next year. And for about 90 percent of those businesses, the entire process will turn out to be, for all practical purposes, entirely futile.

Strategy&. The Strategy Crisis.
Presented at the: 2019.
strategyand.pwc.com
Many leaders will admit this privately: In an anonymous 2019 survey conducted by Strategy&, 37% of 6,000 executive respondents said that their company had a well-defined strategy, and 35% believed that their company’s strategy would lead to success.

Grant RM. Contemporary Strategy Analysis. Wiley-Blackwell; 2005. (Freedman, Strategy: a History, Oxford, 2015).
Both references discuss the lack of common view of strategy. Freedman is general, not restricted to business.

Mintzberg H. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning:
Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners. Free Press; 1994

Brands H. What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush. Cornell University Press; 2014.

Horwath R. StrategyMan vs. the Anti-Strategy Squad: Using Strategic Thinking to Defeat Bad Strategy and Save Your Plan. Greenleaf Book Group Press; 2018. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GY3JCW4/
These examples demonstrate how frequently the terms goals, objectives, strategies and tactics are used interchangeably. The failure to distinguish among them means it is impossible to develop a workable strategy.

Gibbons P. The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture. FT Press; 2015
In this book, I want to shake up our collective certainty that what you do works. As you’ll see in Chapter 1, “Failed Change: The Greatest Preventable Cost to Business?,” change fails about half the time. Defenders of the status quo say “my methods are tested and proven.” They mean, “When I use this change management tool (for example, model, framework, workshop, intervention, process), I cause the following result (for example, performance improvement, increased engagement, reduced cycle time).” The problem is that we cannot easily prove cause and effect and that what we do works. Why?] (Kindle Location 305]

Leinwand P and Rotering J, in HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically; Chapter 24. Harvard Business Review Press; 2019.
But, today, most employees don’t even understand how they are connected to the strategy. In a recent survey of 540 executives, managers, and non-managers by Strategy, only 28% of employees said that they feel fully connected to the purpose and identity of their organization.

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