Product Description

SWOTed by strategy models? Crunched by analysis?  Strategy doesn’t have to be this way.

Strategy is really all about being different. Thinking about it shouldn't make you reach for the snooze button, but in the world of strategy everybody has become so serious.

If that gets us better strategies, fine. But it doesn’t; we get worse ones—predictable, generic, uninspiring, dull.  Strategy doesn’t only have to position; it also has to inspire. So an uninspiring strategy is really no strategy at all.

The most interesting and most successful companies are not boring. They have novel, creative, inspiring, sometimes even playful strategies. By taking the whole strategy business less seriously, they end up with more serious results—and have some fun in the bargain.

Strategy Bites Back invites you to encounter a diverse and unlikely set of voices with something sharp to say about strategy --- from Michael Porter and Peter Drucker to Coco Channel’s "little black dress". Taken together these perspectives will provide you with new and dramatically different angles from which to attack the world of strategy.

·        Strategy as the Little Black Dress

·        Forecasting Whoops

·        Management and Magic

·        The Soft Underbelly of Hard Data

·        Jack Welch on Planning

·        The Seven Deadly Sins of Strategic Planning

·        Strategy from the Grassroots

·        Strategy One Step at a Time

·        Strategy and the Art of Seduction

·        and many more antidotes to dull strategy making and blunt business strategies.

This book is for everyone involved with strategy – manager, CEO, consultant, professor, student – who wants to see strategy more broadly, more deeply and more playfully.

Strategy with a difference starts here, and why not have a good time reading a strategy book for a change?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127122 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 292 pages

Review

"Henry Mintzberg's views are a breath of fresh air which can only encourage the good guys."  The Observer

"One of the most original minds in management."  Fast Company

“A refreshing antidote to the footnote-laden tomes that usually make up the field.  Meaty enough to be serious yet also pleasantly entertaining”
Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge

"This is a naughty book, a really cheeky little brat of a book which ought to be spanked soundly and sent to bed without any supper. Except that, if you did that, you would be missing out on a delightful, entertaining smorgasbord of advice, insights, red herrings and jokes that together make up a classic text for business leaders."
Business Voice

Director 2005

‘a fun read …A tasty smorgasbord of writings on strategy’

Guardian, 2005  

‘a mine full of nuggets’

The Edge, 2005 

‘If you think strategy is boring and best avoided, think again. Strategy Bites Back will not only change your view on strategy, it will inspire and challenge you too…..The authors offer some excellent insights……This true gem of a book should sit proudly on any strategist’s bookshelf.’

From the Back Cover

SWOTed by strategy models? Crunched by analysis?  Strategy doesn’t have to be this way.

Strategy is really all about being different. Thinking about it shouldn't make you reach for the snooze button.

Strategy Bites Back brings you a provocative, imaginative and surprising mix of perspectives to help stimulate more creative strategic thinking and more enjoyable strategy making. From voices as diverse as  and Lucy Kellaway, Mao Tse Tung and Jack Welch, even Michael Porter and Gary Hamel, you can enjoy exploring the sharper side of strategy.

• Strategy as a Little Black Dress
• Forecasting: Whoops!
• Management and Magic
• Strategy and the Art of Seduction
• The Soft Underbelly of Hard Data
• Strategy as destiny      
• Jack Welch on Planning
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Planning
• Strategy One Step at a Time

and many, many more.

Why not have a good time reading a strategy book for a change?

About the Author

Henry Mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg normally bites back on issues of management, organization, and corporate social irresponsibility (i.e., shareholder value), as well as management education and strategy. (Managers not MBAs, with Berrett-Koehler in the US and Financial Times Prentice Hall in Europe was his last book.) He managed to get a PhD in management at MIT and has slipped about 130 articles past unsuspecting editors.  He is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University.

Bruce Ahlstrand

Bruce Ahlstrand likes to prospect for strategy gems in unlikely places - from the game of Texas Hold’em to the Greek tragedies. He is devoted to developing new and creative ways of teaching business strategy and has never met a case study that he liked. He has a D.Phil. from Oxford University and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. Bruce is the author of The Quest for Productivity (Cambridge University Press) and co-author of Human Resource Management in the Multi-Divisional Company (Oxford University Press). He is a professor of management at Trent University in Ontario, Canada.

Joseph Lampel

Joe Lampel began his career believing that strategy is the answer, but has recently concluded that it may be the answer to the wrong question.   He first began to suspect this terrible truth during the long journey that produced the Strategy Safari.  Further research, and numerous publications in journals that are well received in polite academic society, only served to confirm this belief.     Joe was awarded a PhD in management by McGill University for good behavior.  He subsequently spent seven years at Stern School, NYU, trying to break into showbusiness.   He currently resides at Cass Business School, City University London, an institution that happily accommodates his quest to find the answer to strategy's unanswerable questions.

Henry, Bruce and Joe are also the authors of the bestselling Strategy Safari (Financial Times Prentice Hall).

Customer Reviews

at last, a strategy book to make strategy sessions lively
I bought a copy of this book in January, planning to read it before a 2005 strategy session with some colleagues. You know the sort of thing; seven people in a room with a flip-chart trying to be creative and strategic without much inspirartion.

This book made me think, it made me smile and it made me think again. About what we were trying to do and how we were hoping to achieve it. Above all, it inspired me to go into our session prepared to try new things and prepared to challenge the seductively easy answers that always present themselves when you've all dutifully done SWOT plans.

Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel (the guys behind the excellent Strategy Safari) have pulled together some choice pieces of wit and wisdom on strategy and strategy making, and the parts come together to make an enjoyable whole. I loved Strategy as Little Black Dress (does your strategy work well in all situations an feel good when you're wearing it?) and The Tortoise and the Hare: a fable for senior executives.

A great read and a great little companion for creative strategists everywhere. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to give their business strategy some real bite

Doesn't it give more pages of this ?
Extremely funny and light-harted way to understand the pros and cons of variety of strategic approaches.

I admit that it makes more to read fun if you have passed the hard-derscriptions cources for strategic methods that are "depicted" in this book.

However, I still believe that this book is worth reading as an "early warning signal" for students of (strategic) management even during college or early phase of getting-to-know strategy.