Strategy that works : how winning companies close the strategy-to-execution gap /

Strategy That Works, by top consultants Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, is a practitioner-oriented, prescriptive book of the In Search of Excellence sort. It focuses on crafting strategy with a mind to where an organization wants to go, grounded in what it can practically accomplish. A winning company is one seen as managing itself around several differentiating capabilities and integrating them so they are coherent. "Coherence" involves combining a distinctive value proposition with a set of distinctive capabilities, as well as products and services using those capabilities. The authors "looked at fourteen enterprises closely," including Amazon, Apple, and IKEA, focusing on their aspects of coherence. Companies that have built capabilities for success deliberately, such as Tesla Motors and Under Armour, were also used for examples. The authors focus on five unconventional leadership practices that have enabled these companies to be winners: committing to an identity, developing ongoing strategies, establishing a strategy-reinforcing work culture, cutting costs, and aspiring to a great future. Perhaps an even more inspiring approach to strategy is Adam Grant's Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduates, professionals. --Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York