HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection (3 Books)

Harvard Business Review

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781633699304
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

If you aren't working with a strategy, you're wasting your time.

Strategy isn't just a set of plans handed down from the C-suite. To grow as a leader, you need to understand your company's strategy and align your thinking, projects, and team with organizational goals and vision. Master these abilities with the HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection. This three-book set, which includes the HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically, the HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives, and the HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy, will help you change the way you think about your work, manage your most important priorities, and craft a strategy for long-term growth.

You'll learn how to:

• Understand what strategy is--and what it isn't
• Define a clear strategy, whether you're in a start-up or in an established business
• Manage a portfolio of strategic projects
• Embed strategic thinking into your daily tasks and decision making
• Align your team around key objectives
• Let go of work that doesn't add value
• Communicate strategy throughout your organization

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

The titles include:

HBR Guide for Women at Work

HBR Guide to Being More Productive

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

HBR Guide to Changing Your Career

HBR Guide to Coaching Employees

HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback

HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

HBR Guide to Leading Teams

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

HBR Guide to Negotiating

HBR Guide to Office Politics

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

HBR Guide to Project Management

HBR Guide to

Thinking Strategically

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright 2019 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Title: HBR guide to thinking strategically.

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2019] | Series: Harvard Business Review guides | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018032610 (print) | LCCN 2018036095 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633696945 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633696938 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Strategic planning. | Business planning. | Industrial mangement.

Classification: LCC HD30.28 (ebook) | LCC HD30.28 .H394 2019 (print) | DDC 658.4/012—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032610

eISBN: 9781633696945

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

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What You’ll Learn

Your boss just told you to “think strategically,” but what does that mean? Acting on this feedback is crucial for anyone looking to advance their careers—especially aspiring leaders. But it rarely comes with concrete advice on how to do it.

At a basic level, thinking strategically means maintaining a broad perspective on every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting your team’s priorities and managing your own productivity. To do so, you need to understand your company’s key objectives and strategy and keep those driving forces front of mind when you’re faced with tough choices and competing goals. You must also align your team with these organizational needs, so that they’re working on the projects and initiatives that contribute most to executing the company’s strategy. And you must remain agile, able to identify changes in your business environment and alter course when objectives change.

It can be difficult to prioritize big-picture needs over short-term demands—and to know how to switch between the two. This guide provides practical tips and approaches to help you embed strategic thinking into your everyday work, so you can strike the right balance, create real value for your organization, be known as a strategic thinker—and achieve your own career goals.

You’ll learn how to:

• Be more strategic in your daily work
• Ask questions to better understand your company’s strategy
• Demonstrate your thinking skills in ways that your bosses will notice and respect
• Make faster, better decisions
• Identify when to broaden—or narrow—your perspective
• Detect patterns in internal and external trends
• Set your team’s priorities based on goals, resources, and timing
• Navigate conflicting objectives and manage trade-offs
• Cut projects that are no longer adding value
• Communicate a company vision to your employees
• Align your team to execute the strategy
• Deal with common problems like unclear strategic goals or a strategy you disagree with

Contents

Introduction

Why Everyone Needs to Think Strategically

In complex situations, you need a broader view.

SECTION ONE: Get Started: Be Strategic in Your Daily Work

1. Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills

Six abilities to hone and apply.

BY PAUL J. H. SCHOEMAKER, STEVE KRUPP, AND SAMANTHA HOWLAND

2. To Be Strategic, Balance Agility and Consistency

Execute on core principles, but be open to change.

BY JOHN COLEMAN

3. Prove You’re Ready for the Next Level by Showing Off Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Don’t just develop them—demonstrate them.

BY NINA A. BOWMAN

SECTION TWO: Understand Your Organization’s Strategy

4. Understanding Your Organization’s Strategy

Gather perspectives from stakeholders and think through your objectives.

5. Strategy Isn’t What You Say, It’s What You Do

How strategy connects to your daily work.

BY ROGER L. MARTIN

6. Building a Strategic Network

Relationships to help you prepare for the future.

BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

SECTION THREE: Develop a Big-Picture Perspective

7. Spotting Trends and Patterns That Affect Your Business

Find connections between internal and external signals.

BY NINA A. BOWMAN

8. Look at Your Company from the Outside In

Learn what you could be doing differently.

BY GRAHAM KENNY

9. Thinking Long-Term in a Short-Term Economy

When external pressures demand immediate wins.

BY RON ASHKENAS

10. The Future Is Scary. Creative Thinking Can Help

Challenge your current assumptions—and anticipate what’s to come.

BY ALAN INY AND LUC DE BRABANDERE

11. Zoom In, Zoom Out

When to focus on the big picture—and when not to.

BY ROSABETH MOSS KANTER

SECTION FOUR: Align Decisions with Strategic Objectives

12. Reflect on Your Actions and Choices

Every decision requires strategic thought.

BY LIANE DAVEY

13. Seven Steps for Making Faster, Better Decisions

Tools to break biases and improve outcomes.

BY ERIK LARSON

14. How to Make Better Decisions with Less Data

Know what information you need to solve problems.

BY TANYA MENON AND LEIGH THOMPSON

SECTION FIVE: Set Priorities and Manage Trade-Offs

15. A Better Way to Set Strategic Priorities

Separate the critical, the important, and the desirable.

BY DEREK LIDOW

16. How to Prioritize When Your Manager Is Hands-Off

Align your contributions with your passions.

BY AMY JEN SU

17. Identify and Kill Outdated Objectives

Let go of projects of the past.

BY JESSICA AVERY

18. What to Do When Strategic Goals Conflict

How to choose when the answer isn’t clear.

BY RON ASHKENAS AND BROOK MANVILLE

19. Assess and Manage Trade-Offs

List pros and cons, and think about outcomes.

SECTION SIX: Align Your Team Around Strategic Goals

20. To Be a Strategic Leader, Ask the Right Questions

Drive dialogue with your team.

BY LISA LAI

21. An Exercise to Get Your Team Thinking Differently About the Fu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy
• HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives
• HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically