Product Description

For corporate strategy to live and work, people have to understand strategy, and strategy makers have to understand people.  They need a living strategy.

"This insightful book has been the publishing event of the last few months - and rightly so. .... It's rounded off with a workbook - this makes an already reasonably priced book into even better value. If you want to tap into the current thinking and breathe life and purpose into people development, then make sure that you grab a copy." Training Magazine

"People are our most important asset", "We are a knowledge based company", "All we have is our people", are statements we increasingly hear, and statements which are all to often unsubstantiated by reality. For many people the actuality of organizational life is that they do not feel they are treated as the most important assets and they do not feel their knowledge is understood or used.

 The arguments for the central role of people can play in the creation of sustainable competitive advantage are compelling. Each of us has our own set of stories about how people have made a real difference to their business. Living Strategy demonstrates that the companies who will be most successful in the 21st century will be those that are capable of gathering and bonding talented, creative people, who are excited and motivated, who trust the company and are inspired by what they do. It places the behavior of individual employees at the center of wealth creation.  

This book shows executives how to design strategies that have meaning and purpose for people, without whose commitment they remain drawings on the wall chart. It will show line managers how to implement strategy and carry their people with them. It will bring strategy to life for businesses because it will bring strategy to life for people.  

Living Strategy puts forth three basic tenets that differentiate people from money and technology: we operate in time, we search for meaning, and we have soul. These tenets are then used as the basis for putting human capital at the center of corporate strategy.

 We operate in time  Our current behavior is influenced by the memory of the past and by the beliefs of the future. Human development progresses through a shared sequence as skills and knowledge may take years to develop and attitudes and values area resistant to rapid change.

We search for meaning  We strive to interpret the clues and events around us, we actively engage with the world, to seek a sense of meaning - to understand who we are and what we can contribute. Over time groups of people create collective viewpoints, a sense of shared symbols, which may be events or artifacts are important in creating a sense of meaning.

 We have a soul  Each of us has a deep sense of personal identity of what we are and of what we believe in. We can trust and feel inspired by our work - and when we do we are more creative. We can dream about possibilities and events. We can choose to give or withhold our knowledge - depending on how we feel.  Living Strategy takes the reader through the why and the how of thinking and acting differently to increase the performance of their business, and create organizations, which have meaning and soul.

Contents

• The need for a fundamental shift in our thinking
• The first tenet: we operate in time
• The second tenet: we search for meaning
• The third tenet: we have soul
• Bridging from theory to reality
• Creating a vision
• Scanning for capability and identifying the gap
• Creating a map of the system
• Bridging from dreams to reality
• Building human capital

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260289 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Living Strategy is Lynda Gratton's attempt to place employees in the context of a business with all its competing attractions. And while it is commonplace among corporations to pay lip service to the need to "put people first", Gratton attempts to demonstrate the benefit to corporations of actually doing so. Even more importantly, she brings it down to the particular level of what a company must do to understand staff and therefore to empower them.

Her three key tenets are that people "operate in time"; that is, they have a past, present, and future which informs their judgements. That people "search for meaning in their work". They try to learn the rules of the game irrespective of company policy. The final component is that "People have soul;" they like to get excited about what they do. On top of these three theoretical constructs, she overlays three separate business case studies which revolve around the on-going success of Hewlett-Packard and the H-P Way, the success of Motorola in building a work force in China where others have failed, and finally how Glaxxo Welcome was able to speed up delivery of new products in the face of the expiry of its key patents. Indeed, the book is filled with mini case studies and surveys and experiments to prove her point.

Living Strategy suffers a little from untidy sentence construction and pertinent, useful points get lost in a sea of words. At other times, Gratton switches to jargon, which demands incredible tolerance and patience on the part of lay readers. Quibbles aside, however, her book makes a rewarding and thoughtful read. --Bruce McWilliams

Review

"A growing number of managers around the world have come to recognize that human capital is rapidly replacing physical and financial capital as the key source of competitive advantage. The challenge is to come to grips with the "how to"s" of linking their people strategy with their business strategy. Conceptually robust, yet highly practical, Professor Gratton"s book will be extremely useful in establishing this link."

Sumantra Ghoshal, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership, London Business School

"Gratton"s thoughtful and creative work breathes life into the role of people in organizations. It helps executives clearly see why people matter and how to create organizations that accomplish both people and organizational goals. Gratton has been a thought leader in the people (HR) profession for years; this work now shows all managers how to better understand and use people. The book will become a classic for HR professionals and a toolkit for line managers."

David Ulrich, Professor of Business, University of Michigan

"This insightful book has been the publishing event of the last few months - and rightly so. .... It's rounded off with a workbook - this makes an already reasonably priced book into even better value. If you want to tap into the current thinking and breathe life and purpose into people development, then make sure that you grab a copy."   Training Magazine

"How refreshing to discover a book with new answers on how to be successful, where you find the logic inescapably true.  We have for too long attributed success to the skills of tech leader.  Reading this book brings home how important it is to involve all the people in an organization."   Knowledge Management

From the Back Cover

The Living Strategy - Back cover:

"A growing number of managers around the world have come to recognize that human capital is rapidly replacing physical and financial capital as the key source of competitive advantage. The challenge is to come to grips with the "how to"s" of linking their people strategy with their business strategy. Conceptually robust, yet highly practical, Professor Gratton"s book will be extremely useful in establishing this link."Sumantra Ghoshal, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership, London Business School

"Gratton"s thoughtful and creative work breathes life into the role of people in organizations. It helps executives clearly see why people matter and how to create organizations that accomplish both people and organizational goals. Gratton has been a thought leader in the people (HR) profession for years; this work now shows all managers how to better understand and use people. The book will become a classic for HR professionals and a toolkit for line managers."David Ulrich, Professor of Business, University of Michigan

Money used to buy you market share, technology used to bring you competitive advantage. Now even 23 year olds can raise a million dollars and technology is imitated in months. So what"s the next great frontier of advantage for businesses? The people who live there. Only people can turn strategy into living, breathing purpose. In this ground-breaking book, Lynda Gratton shares for the first time the "why" and "how" of putting people at the heart of corporate strategy. If companies want to increase their business performance, they need to recognize and develop the soul of the organization: they need a Living Strategy.

Inside front flap:"If "people are our greatest assets", it"s time to make strategies that people can live in. Living Strategy is the book that puts the human in human capital."- Lynda Gratton"People are our most important asset", "We are a knowledge based company", "All we have is our people". These are statements that we hear ever more frequently, from more and more companies. Yet, for too many of the people who populate our companies, the reality of organizational life is that people do not feel they are treated as the most important assets and they do not feel their knowledge is understood or used.The only route to improved performance is by placing your human resource at the centre of your strategic decision-making. Living Strategy shows you why and how to design strategies that have meaning and purpose for people, without whose commitment they remain drawings on the board-room wall chart. It argues that a new management agenda is crucial and shares the three tenets of human organizational behaviour. The six step Living Strategy journey guides the reader through the implementation of a strategy which will not only grow your organization, but create a business of which you can be proud.For corporate strategy to live and work, people have to understand strategy, and strategy makers have to understand people. Inside back flap:Professor Lynda Gratton is a global authority on the people implications of strategy and Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. She writes, teaches and consults across the world on human resource strategy. At London Business School she is Dean of the MBA Programme and Director of the Executive programme "Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Organisations. Since 1992, Lynda has directed the Leading Edge Research Consortium in partnership with companies such as Hewlett Packard, Glaxo Wellcome and Citibank. Reflections on these companies formed the framework for Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality" published by Oxford University Press in 1999.Lynda has profoundly influenced the way managers think about human resource strategy. She consults actively to some of the world"s largest companies and has trained managers all over the world in her "Living Strategy" process.

Customer Reviews

An insightful approach on how to win through people
Of all the books I have read on the subject of HR Strategy, none comes as close to the mark as "Living Strategy" in helping provide senior managers to design strategies that have meaning for the people who will implement them. Lynda Gratton's work provides an insightful, yet very pragmatic, six step approach on how to translate agreed strategies into reality by involving key stakeholders in the business.

Progressive organisations have come to realise that innovation and renewal are their lifeblood for future growth and success. This book helped me to understand how it is possible to help people feel valued by treating them as partners in the strategy development and implementation process. A workforce which feels valued and included in the strategic debate are far more likely to want to contribute to the ongoing success of the organisation in which they work

Essential reading for all HR professionals
An extremely practical book which is essential reading for all HR professionals who aspire to becoming "strategic partners". The book is written as a series of steps to follow to create HR truly integrated into business strategy. The description of facilitating a visioning workshop with executives is particularly powerful together with the case examples throughout the book.Many other relevant approaches, such as systems thinking, have been included in a way which almost makes the book a toolkit for defining an organisation's core capability. I shall use it regularly!

Essential part of any HR Strategists Toolkit
Lynda Gratton, IMHO, has done something quite unusual in the field of UK academia - published a work that is eminently readable by the non-academic. Her six-step approach has given me an extremely powerful tool and one that overcomes the weaknesses of approaches that take the 'here and now' as the starting point.

Clarity in Part III of the book suffers a little -and Part IV, the workbook, seems only to skim the surface - an opportunity missed (IMHO).

If you can live with those niggles, you have a very useful strategic HR intervention and one that gets to the real issues associated with organisational change.