The Library Means Business: Books offer varied insights to strategic business planning

Mike DePue is the business librarian at the Library Center.

"What business strategy is all about; what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as effectively as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors," writes Kenichi Ohmae, business consultant and author.

What's the use?

Strategic business plans are the means to an end because, according to Ohmae, you'd better have one if you want the competitive advantage.

How do you get one? A good place to start is the Springfield-Greene County Library.

Books@The Library

How can you avoid getting dragged out to sea by the riptide of business change? This century's business environment penalizes products and ideas, regardless of inherent quality, that are slow in reaching the marketplace.

Business haste

The emphasis on information availability and competitive intelligence almost guarantees that somebody else has a similar product or idea reaching fruition. Two highly innovative and successful business consultants, Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton, have written "It's Not the Big That Eat the Small It's the Fast That Eat the Slow." In detailing how to use speed as a competitive strategic planning tool, they focus on such concepts as unbundling, portfolio shuffling, constant reassessment and idea grinding.

In with the old

Another title about forging ahead of change is "Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers" by Robert Kriegel and David Brandt. Some of the sacred cows on the authors' grill are reports that become the unread undead, conferences that start nowhere and end up back at the starting point and product lines with negligible profitability.

The book addresses the puzzling questions of why people so strenuously and staunchly hold on to the old and why reengineering, virtual teams, outsourcing, reinventing, restructuring and downsizing almost always prove unsuccessful. You'll find out who the gatekeepers of change are and how to mobilize them.

Change engenders uncertainty and strategic planning must compensate for this by tailoring the decision-making process.

Navigating a business

"20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World" by Hugh Courtney is based on a study of the strategy problems faced by more than 100 companies. Three basic courses to be determined are: shape or adapt, now or later, and focus or diversify. Also to be addressed are the four levels of residual uncertainty, which is what is still left over after the best possible analysis of a problem. Residual uncertainty is not what you don't know it's what you can't know. Among many things that you're likely to learn from this book is how dangerous it is to assume status-quo competitor behavior.

Pertinent Web sites

www.businessweek.com/1996/35/b34901.htm

"After a decade of gritty downsizing, Big Thinkers are back in corporate vogue," declares this '96 Business Week cover story. What was being rediscovered was "the idea of rising above the tumult of day-to-day business to ponder the future of markets and competitors." As Kent C. Nelson, the chairman of United Parcel Service, explained, "Because we're making bigger bets on investments in technology, we can't afford to spend a whole lot of money in one direction and then find out five years later it was the wrong direction."

www.cssp.com/edsel/default.asp

The Center for Simplified Strategic Planning introduces the Edsel Award. They promise examples of strategies so complicated that nobody can understand them, ineffective implementation at the hands of egotistical incompetents, and just plain dumb (and dumber!) ideas.

http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/ admin_finance/strategic/ch2.html

This site betrays its academic origin and orientation, but does offer a primer on strategic planning. It points out the need for strategic planning is based on demographic, economic and cultural changes. Another important point is the necessity of involving an organization's leadership; don't give away planning to support staff or consultants.