3 Strategic Planning Books to Study With
Business models change. Technology advances. Objectives shift. These changes are critical to the foundation of an organization. You must be ready to update strategies and processes to benefit a growing company.
That means keeping up on your strategic planning knowledge. Whether you’re a business analyst, stakeholder, entrepreneur or love understanding what makes or breaks a business.
Below are highly rated strategic planning books to sink your teeth into.
1. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
Published: July 13, 2010
Price: $16.60 (Kindle); $20.19 (Paperback)
This is a handbook for strategic planners, business owners, and stakeholders who seek to abandon legacy business models.
Companies must adapt to new realities, which can require a change in focus, resources, and strategy. The strategy is key; without it, you can’t bypass competitors. This is where Business Model Generation comes into play.
This book features practitioners from over 40 countries. Each has contributed designs of strategic ideas and tools that anyone can easily implement into their organizations. This book highlights key patterns within Business Models, based on leading business thinkers’ concepts, to use in your own organizations.
You’ll learn how to implement business models and how to understand current models in order to revamp them, if possible. Additionally, as the models are learned, you’ll understand value propositions, customers, distribution channels and revenue streams on a deeper level.
This book is perfect for strategic planning since it provides practical techniques to innovate businesses, provided by leading consultants and companies worldwide.
2. Crafting & Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases (Irwin Management) – 20th Edition
Published: January 20, 2015
Price: $23.00 – $285.00 (depending on seller and type)
This textbook is an excellent guide to analytic tools and core concepts behind strategy and organizations. The 20th edition adds modern concepts and presentations. While it’s used primarily in a classroom setting, with new and existing cases to dissect and understand, it is still useful for single study.
It’s over 900 pages, so you may decide to just pick and choose the most relevant chapters to your situation. Rather than digesting the entire textbook.
3. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals
Published: April 12, 2016
Price: $14.82 (Kindle), $15.90 (Hardcover), or $11.55 (Paperback)
Organizations need to know two things: what strategies to execute and how efficient performance will be. This novel explores companies who have successfully executed strategies to accomplish goals several times over.
When businesses die, it’s not always a loud crash. It’s not necessarily obnoxious. Some organizations fail quietly, with no one noticing. This book teaches you 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX). It’s a straightforward and repeatable formula to execute strategic priorities. It promises to help leaders achieve results, even when the strategy requires changes from teams (who may not be thrilled to do so).
4DX is a proven set of practices, tested by hundreds of organizations over many years. This book highlights a new way to achieve a continuous competitive advantage.
Honestly…
Some of these books sound too good to be true. A mixture of buzzwords, positivity, and big promises. But it doesn’t hurt to take a look. Start with the book that intrigues you most. Read through it (or the relevant chapters) once.
Then read it again and take notes.
But most importantly execute what is being taught. None of these books can help if the information sits in your skull, collecting dust. Start making changes to innovate organizations immediately.
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