Best Business Strategy Books

Business Strategy

An organisation’s strategy is the vision of where it wants to be in the future. Strategy creates alignment among the many decisions within a business and across the organisation. It is important for the CEO or business leader to spend time on strategy as he or she will provide direction for the company, helps makes its value proposition explicit, and defines how it will compete in the marketplace and differentiate itself from rivals.

Developing a strategy requires strategic thinking. Tools for strategic thinking includes

  • SWOT analysis which can be used to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats,
  • PESTLE framework for identifying political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environment,
  • BCG matrix which is use to set strategies for products, services, or functions,
  • Scenario Planning which is use to consider different future scenarios, and the the impact of each scenario on a particular issue.
  • Five Forces model – which can help leaders understand their organisation’s position in their business environment, and so move towards one that is more profitable and less vulnerable to attack
  • Blue Ocean Strategy – which states that a company is better off searching for uncontested marketplaces instead of competing in existing ones.
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The Synergy Solution by Deloitte’s Mark Sirower and Jeff Weirens show acquirers how to develop and execute an M&A strategy end to end that not only avoids the pitfalls that so many companies fall into but also creates real, long-term shareholder value.

Chapters covers key topics such as:

  1. M&A Strategy and Governance
  2. Financial, Commercial, and Operational Due Diligence
  3. Valuation and Strategy
  4. Getting M&A Right

Sirower and Weirens also show those who have already started the process of M&A how to maximize their chances of success.

This well-written and useful book provide comprehensive insights and strategies acquirers need to find success at every stage of an M&A process.  Create a competitive future for your company and win the M&A game today with this book.

 

Fred Reichheld in his new book “Winning on Purpose” demonstrates that the primary purpose of a business should be to enrich the lives of its customers. This is because when customers feel this love, they will come back for more and bring their friends—generating good profits for the firm.  Learn more on this Net Promoter System 3.0 (NPS 3.0) and the new metric ‘Earned Growth Rate’ which will bring about enduring business success.  

With the compelling examples and fresh insights in this book, it highlight that great companies with superior NPS consistently deliver and can sustain superior returns to shareholders across a wide array of industries.

Overall, Winning on Purpose is a practical book for inspiring customer love and using Net Promoter will bring about achievement both personal and business success.  Definitely a useful book to have.

Dunkin’ Donuts former CEO Robert Rosenberg shares useful insights on building one of the world’s most recognized brands. Over his rein,  he grew the company from $10 million in sales to over $2 billion with more than 3,000 outlets. 

From Rosenberg’s story you will:

  • Understand the characteristics of a successful company through all phases of growth.
  • Obtain important business insights from the tenure of one of the most successful CEO runs in modern business history.
  • Learn 12 key lessons which include topics on strategy, organisation, communication, crisis management and  many others.

Overall this is a concise and insightful book that business leaders, managers and entrepreneurs can definitely benefit from.

In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee shows how companies achieve more by doing less. 

Better, Simpler Strategy provides readers with a simple tool, the value stick, which every organization can use to make its strategy more effective and easier to execute. The value stick helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen the competitive advantage of their business.

The author shows that companies that win, create value for customers by raising their ‘Willingness-to-pay’, and they provide value for talent by lowering their ‘Willingness-to-sell’. 

With many useful visuals and examples of organisations across different  industries and geographies, such as Best Buy, Amazon, Tata Group, Nike, JPMorgan Chase Amazon Better, Simpler Strategy is a very useful and practical book in guiding leaders and executives to make better strategic decisions so as to achieve exceptional performance for their organization.

Positioning for Advantage by Kimberly A Whitler is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. 

The author identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve market advantage. Introducing seven tools, such as brand essesce statement, strategy maps, influencer mapping and others   – Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. 

This book presents concrete strategies and examples helping readers to move beyond the ‘what’ to the ‘how’ of achieving positional advantage. Overall, Positioning for Advantage is an insightful and practical book that will help marketers, business leaders, and C-suite leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

Making Great Strategy resolves these challenges of developing great strategies with a straightforward, readily applicable framework. Authors Jesper B. Sørensen and Glenn R. Carroll show that a key factor underlies all sustainably successful strategies – that is a logically coherent argument that connects resources, capabilities, and environmental conditions to desired outcomes is needed. 

The authors introduce a system for formulating and managing strategy through a set of three core activities: visualization, formalization and logic, and constructive argumentation. The book includes examples and case studies from well-known companies such as Apple, Walmart, and The Economist.

Overall, this is a useful book for managers and leaders at all levels, and especially for any executives who want to make a great strategy for their organization.

Lessons from the Titans offers useful lessons for today’s leaders to create sustainable success. You will learn about amongst other companies, how

  • GE – how it became the largest company
  • Danaher – how it avoided the pitfalls of tremendous success by continually reinventing itself
  • Honeywell – how it went through a near-fatal cultural breakdown and then executed a flawless turnaround
  • Caterpillar – how it relied too much on forecasting, lost billions―and rallied by recommitting to the basics

The many eye-opening case studies with insightful analysis in this book will help you weather market upheavals, tackle  disruptions, and optimize resources to bring about success for your organisation.

In Fast Times, McKinsey leaders Peter Dahlstrom and others, provide a readable inside look into what digital winners do best: set direction, learn, and adapt faster than anyone else. Fast Times addresses question and issues like:
– Do you really know how your company is performing?
– How do you make it safe for people to experiment so you can build a proactive culture?
– How do you balance fast execution with deliberate decision-making?
– Are your training programs up to the challenge of reskilling the talent you need tomorrow?
– Do your IT people have the skills needed to build the tech that’s needed and incorporate cybersecurity? Find out more in this useful book from the experts at McKinsey & Company on what matters most in order to become a digital winner. 

Dear Shareholder holds letters by more than 20 different leaders from 17 companies. These leaders include Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), Tom Gayner (Markel), Kay Graham and Don Graham (The Washington Post and Graham Holdings), Roberto Goizueta (Coca-Cola), Virginia Rometty (IBM), and Prem Watsa (Fairfax). Topics covered in these letters include the long-term focus, corporate culture and commitment to values, capital allocation, buybacks, dividends, acquisitions, management, business strategy, and executive compensation. As we survey the corporate landscape in search of outstanding companies run by first-rate managers, shareholder letters are a valuable resource. The letters also contain a wealth of knowledge on the core topics of effective business management. 

The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list.

Bring strategy into your daily work. It’s your responsibility as a leader or manager to ensure that your work, and the work of your team aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. You’ll learn how to:

  • Understand your organization’s strategy
  • Align your team around key objectives
  • Focus on the priorities that matter most
  • Spot trends in your company and in your industry
  • Consider future outcomes when making decisions
  • Manage trade-offs
  • Embrace a leadership mindset

50 Business Classics presents the great entrepreneur stories, the best management thinking and the proven ideas on strategy, innovation and marketing – in one volume. 50 Business Classics presents the key ideas from classic texts such as My Years with General Motors and Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited to contemporary business lessons from the rise of tech giants like Google, Apple and Amazon. It contains revealing biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett, as well as lesser-known stories including creation of publishing giant Penguin and Chinese behemoth Alibaba. Here you’ll find the texts and ideas that matter in: * Entrepreneurship * Leadership * Management * Strategy * Business history * Personal development * Technology and innovation 

Conclusion

We will be featuring top business strategy books here which could help you on your business journey.