The Interactive Strategy Workout: Analyze and Develop the Fitness of Your Business

361 Pages·2003·1.83 MB·English

by  Cyril. Levicki

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THE
INTERACTIVE STRATEGY
WORKOUT
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THE
INTERACTIVE
STRATEGY
WORKOUT
THIRD EDITION
Analyze and develop
the fitness of your
business strategy
DR CYRIL LEVICKI
Imprint ofPearson Education
London · New York · Toronto · Sydney · Tokyo · Singapore · Hong Kong
Cape Town · Madrid · Paris · Amsterdam · Munich · Milan
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Pearson Education Limited
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Edinburgh Gate, Harlow
Essex CM20 2JE
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Website: www.business-minds.com
First edition 1996
Second edition 1999
Third edition published in Great Britain in 2003
© Cyril Levicki 2003
The right of Cyril Levicki to be identified as Author
of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 0 273 65912 X
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
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About the Author
Dr Cyril Levicki started life in the tough streets of inner urban London. After
leaving school he worked as a labourer. Later he ran his own, wholesale and
retail businesses.
After a successful business career he attended London University, aged 32,
and studied economics and politics. After graduating he was awarded a
scholarship to study for his PhD at the London Business School. He com-
pleted three years later and was invited to turn his research into an advanced
strategy and policy elective for the LBS MBA programme, which he also
taught.
Cyril was appointed a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary College soon after. He
also served as Visiting Professor at Baruch College in New York. He is now
teaching at Reading University.
Since 1983 he has acted as a consultant for many international organiza-
tions, usually helping chairpersons and chief executives to formulate or
revise the long-term strategy of their businesses. He is usually retained for
long periods thereafter to help these organizations change the behaviour of
their top teams to ensure successful implementation of the strategies they
have devised.
Cyril lives in the countryside in Oxfordshire.
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In loving memory of my mother and father
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Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Preface to the Third Edition xiv
Part One: Methodology for strategic analysis
1 Introduction to the workout method 3
2 Mission and vision statements 11
3 Examining the non-controllable environment 29
4 Studying the competitors 48
5 Market and business analysis 61
6 Organizational self-analysis: strengths, neutrals
and weaknesses 84
7 Organizational culture 120
8 Value chains and how to analyze them 136
9 Numerical evaluation 157
10 Being creative about the long-term strategy 175
11 Organizational structure 206
12 Short-term tactics to build the long-term strategy 229
13 International considerations 243
Part Two: Implementation through
leadership and management
14 Leadership 263
15 Strategic management 286
Epilogue 296
CONTENTS vii
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Part Three: Measure your final
strategy workout fitness
Workout audits 301
Further reading 325
Index 329
How you can get the most from your strategy
workout: a note from the author 343
CD of all the workouts Inside back cover
viii CONTENTS
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Foreword
Welcome to strategy and its supposed mysteries. There are fewer secrets to
strategy than some would have you think – but enough to fill this book.
Why a strategy workout? Because learning to write a strategic plan is a
basic skill required at every level of management. If you cannot do it you
will not survive as a manager or a leader.
This book is designed to be user friendly. There is a minimum of jargon
and pseudo science. I try to specialize in common sense, aided by the good
fortune of having spent 20 years formulating and implementing strategy
with many leaders of usually large corporations and their teams. I do this
through my consulting practice which specializes in helping leaders formu-
late or change the mission and strategy of their business. The leader often
contacts me when he or she has some particular problem in their business or
corporation which is preventing them from moving forward. I go in to help
him or her remove the immediate problem from the table. I often then help
them work with their team to understand and overcome the problems of
implementation of the new mission and strategy which they have devised
with me as their catalyst. That pattern of behaviour has forced me to design
highly practical strategies that work easily with the set of people and
resources at the leader’s disposal – including their personal aptitude. I stay
around long enough to be found out if the ideas don’t work!
Methodology and layout
The book is divided into three parts. The first part gives you to the methodol-
ogy for strategic analysis. It enables you to judge how much more you need
to study aspects of the organization to sharpen your understanding and
capacity to analyze each specific area of strategy. Each chapter ends with a
page or two of ‘workout’ which is there to enable the reader to test whether
he or she has understood the content by asking brief questions about their
own business. If they can answer them without reading the chapter I advise
them not to bother. The last two chapters describe how you apply the strate-
gic analysis to an organization and what thinking needs to go into the
implementation of the strategy.
FOREWORD ix