Career Strategy

A Best Non-Fiction Book of 2024 from The Next Big Idea Book Club and National Bestseller. From Seth Godin, one of the world's most influential business thinkers and bestselling author of This is Marketing, comes an essential guide to thinking strategically in a complex, ever-changing world...

A business's overall strategy may be set at board level, but many people throughout the organisation will be involved in deciding that strategy and implementing it - making decisions that are strategic in nature. On these decisions hangs the future of the business: how successful it is, even whether it is successful. Yet business history is full of strategic decisions, both big and small, that were weak, poorly conceived and consequently disastrous.

Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into 19 languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world.

What if strategy could instead be clear, simple, bold, and even actually useful? That’s what No Bullsh*t Strategy is all about. It sweeps away all the garbled corporate nonsense and dry academic theorising to leave you with pure strategic sauce, which can be actioned right away. It’ll make you see your business in a totally new light, and effortlessly unlock insights you didn’t know you had in you. Even better, it makes strategy fun.

The Complete Strategy Collection, a compilation of ancient and historical philosophies, will increase your knowledge of strategy, conflict, and adversity throughout the ages, giving you valuable insight into the past while opening a window to the future. Although each of the works can be considered a manual or diagram for war or engaging in physical combat, the life skills embodied in each can be adapted to everyday life in modern society. Listen and learn how you, too, can take advantage of the strategies of war.

Strategy-to-performance gaps foster a culture of under-performance. Unrealistic plans create the expectation throughout the organisation that plans simply will not be fulfilled. This book shows how to overcome such failings and implement strategy effectively.

Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It’s the art of anticipating your opponent’s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies - from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history - the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it.

Strategy is about shaping the future. Thinking strategically is what separates good managers and great leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on strategy, listen to these ten articles (featuring "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you catalyze your organization's strategy development and execution.

In this revised and updated edition of Leading Successful Change, Shea and Solomon share success stories from a host of companies including Twitter, Viacom, and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, offering a tested method for leading successful change, which they have developed over a combined fifty years of helping organizations do just that.

Sell your business. Stick the landing. We’ll show you how. Exit Strategy is everything you need to know about selling a business. Dr. Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist specializing in entrepreneur mental health, and Rob Walling, a serial entrepreneur who has secured life-changing sums in multiple exits, have teamed up to provide you with a roadmap for navigating this treacherous terrain, offering a rare combination of practical savvy and emotional nuance that can only come from a true understanding of the journey. Exit Strategy will teach you: When is the right time to sell?

Explore the universe of potential buyers. Learn how to assemble a team of expert advisors to prepare your business for sale. Walk step by step through a typical investment-banker-led midmarket sale process from start to finish. Adam Coffey has spent the last 20 years as CEO of three private-equity-backed national service companies. Through his experience executing a buy-and-build strategy, he has bought and sold more than 100 companies ranging in size from $1 million to $1 billion. Selling your business is an art.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

Most entrepreneurs are running on fumes—trapped in a loop of doing, fixing, and catching up. You can’t step away without something slipping. Deep down, you know the problem isn’t effort—it’s control. The "hustle" is a lie. The path to a million-dollar business isn't working harder; it's shifting from Operator to Architect — building systems that do the draining, repetitive work for you.

A Simon & Schuster audiobook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every listener...

Algorithms, machine learning, generative AI. With the latest advancements in technology, data is taking center stage in organizations. But without a clear plan for how you're storing, integrating, and gaining value from that information, your company will be at risk—and fall behind. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on setting a data strategy in your organization, listen to these ten articles.

How did Apple rebound from a decade-long slump? By creating a product, the iPod, that transformed not just the company, but the entire music industry. How did Whole Foods turn itself into a supermarket empire? By challenging the sacred cows of the food business. And how did Dove differentiate its line of beauty products? By creating the concept of "real beauty". In Big Think Strategy, Bernd Schmitt shows you how to "think big" by sourcing and implementing bold ideas that change markets.

In this book, The Boston Consulting Group's Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha offer a proven method to determine the strategy approach that is best for your company. They start by helping you assess your business environment—how unpredictable it is, how much power you have to change it, and how harsh it is—a critical component of getting strategy right.

Informed by interviews with corporate strategists at leading companies around the world, eminent consultants at firms such as Bain, the Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey & Co., and the internal archives of strategic innovators such as General Electric and Shell, this book provides vivid insights into the trials and tribulations of practice innovation in strategy, and stresses the hard work of the little recognized and sometimes eccentric innovators within the profession.

The One-Hour Strategy follows Martin, the new sales team lead at Waters & Flows, which attracted him because of their unique way of doing strategy. We shadow Martin as he onboards with his new colleagues, who walk him through each aspect of their One-Hour Strategy, answering his questions and addressing his reservations.