- ISBN13: 9780979845710
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
We often (or even usually) know what we should be doing in both personal and professional life. We also know why we should be doing it and (often) how to do it. Figuring all that out is not too difficult. What is very hard is actually doing what you know to be good for you in the long-run, in spite of short-run temptations. The same is true for organizations. What is noteworthy is how similar (if not identical) most firms’ strategies really are: provide outstanding … More >>
Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
David Maister has written another very readable, logical, practical book that’s brimming with common sense. It’s for leaders who could use a Dutch uncle’s bony index finger in their sternum to remind them of what they already know but don’t have the focus and discipline to do day after day.
As a management consultant for the past 25-plus years, I’ve watched leaders struggle with defining, clarifying and implementing business strategies. They struggle because it’s not easy work. It’s like dieting or quitting smoking and staying with it. It’s hard work.
Drawing on the diet/smoking analogy, Maister offers up useful ways to think about strategy–starting with having the right mindset. To this he introduces tools, techniques and processes to make strategy work…this time.
He’s so usefully blunt with that bony index finger. “Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do.” So, strategy is not just about strategy, but execution.
And commitment and resolute focus. “You can’t achieve a competitive differentiation through things you do ‘reasonably well most of the time.’”
And discipline. “The necessary outcome of strategic planning is not analytical insight but resolve.”
And knowing when to say no. “Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away.”
Maister covers the gamut, from building ownership and accountability in the strategy (consequences for non-compliance), avoiding temptation, creating rules to live by, clarifying expectations and roles for leaders and overcoming obstacles that I have seen leaders struggle with over the years.
Of all the business books that flood the market these days, Strategy and the Fat Smoker stands out for its practicality, common sense and long-term usefullness. It’s already a dog-eared reference book on my bookshelf.
Jim Shaffer
Jim Shaffer Group
Rating: 5 / 5
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R21ST6AEVSVLZ3 A look inside what will likely be the best business book of 2008. David Maister has collected decades of experience into what may be seen as the ultimate management BS detector. He shreds fads and provides common sense advice to people who are serious about improving leadership, management, and customer relationship capabilities. We’ll look at each section and the content and format that makes this book so special.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s a new year and you want to lose weight. You know what to do. Odds are, however, that you will not do it.
So it goes with professional service firms strategies. Every firm knows what to do but they just don’t do it. Why? Because they aren’t sick. Once they have that first heart attack things will change.
That is the central point David makes in this great book. He makes the point simply and effectively and this is a must read for every person who lives by the billable hour.
Heads of firms should skip straight to the chapter titled “The Chief Executive’s Speech.” Take it, put it on some note cards and give it the next beginning of the fiscal year all-hands meeting. This is what you should be saying instead of the things you’ve been saying before.
I hope to hear that some firm has ditched their current strategy and replaced it with David’s. That firm will make more money than their competition.
Rating: 4 / 5
Maister gets a lot right: appeal to an employee’s own needs, not the greater corporate good(more work, less support makes for a bad rallying cry); embrace a relationship mentality in business deverlopment not a transaction on(as he bluntly puts it, go for romance and not a one night stand although many talk the first but do the second); understand that all can be rainmakers if you speak to their needs and intererests first with the money a nice side benefit, a consequence and not a motivator. His chapter on law firms is disheartening.He says that they are so different from other PSFs that they need their own chapter. His analysis:”(law firms are made up of)bands of warlords,each with his or her followers,ruling over a group of cowed citizens and acting in temporary alliance—until a better opportunity comes along.” Beacuse of billing pressures, he says many partners hoard the work that needs to be pressed down. A final point, and one I disagree with—he seems to suggest that PSFs must only cater to the elite clients and there is no room for commodity work. Yet it is the commodity work which trains newer employees and, at times, fills in the dry periods between the more margin filled engagements.
Rating: 4 / 5
Although Maister is writing for and about professional services companies, I think his ideas about strategy apply to almost any type of business. The “Fat Smoker” analogy is memorable, and it means that we don’t always do what we know is good for us, even when it comes to running a business. In order to achieve great results, we have to break the old habits that have kept us in the same old ruts. Most of the book concentrates on ways we can develop the right attitude toward our own work, interact more effectively with co-workers, and build inspired, cohesive organizations. For some people, this book will be like preaching to the converted. But for business leaders and professionals who think the individual is more important that the organization, or who lead by intimidation, it will be a challenging read. Although Maister has an easy to read style, there is nothing easy about his ideas. He shares great wisdom obviously the result of long years grappling with organizational problems at a high level.
Rating: 4 / 5