Myths of Strategy: Dispel the Misconceptions and Deliver a Winning Strategy

  • 3h 7m
  • Jérôme Barthélemy
  • Kogan Page
  • 2022

Every business should introduce new technologies to improve their performance? The only way to innovate is to think outside of the box? And obviously, having a Chief Strategy Officer is a guarantee of success. Really?

The reality is that there are no magic recipes for success. If there were, every company would use them, and no single company would be outstanding.

Business strategy is messy, requires hard graft and is difficult to get right. And yet the world of strategy is dominated by management consultants and business gurus making sweeping generalizations, oversimplifying business thinking and peddling their own unfounded ideas. But do these methods actually work?

Myths of Strategy debunks thirty of these most common strategy sagas, cutting through consultant hyperbole and provide you with tried and test business ideas that will make your company more successful.

About the Business Myths series...

The Business Myths series tackles the falsehoods that pervade the business world. From leadership and management to social media, strategy and the workplace, these accessible books overturn out-of-date assumptions, skewer stereotypes and put oft-repeated slogans to the test. Entertaining and rigorously researched, these books will equip you with the insight and no-nonsense wisdom you need to succeed.

About the Author

Jérôme Barthélemy is Executive Vice-President, Dean for Post Experience Programs, Corporate Programs and Relations and Professor of strategy and management at ESSEC Business School, Paris, France. He has been a visiting professor and visiting research scholar at New York University (NYU), Stanford University and Cambridge University. His book, Unleash your company's competitive spirit, received France's best management book award in 2017.

In this Book

  • Introduction
  • You Should Look to the Best for Inspiration
  • Strategy is Very Different from the Sciences
  • The Most Successful Strategies are Carefully Planned
  • Success is Essentially About Talent
  • It is Impossible to Think Strategically in an Environment of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity
  • Direct Aim is the Best Way to Attain Goals
  • Firms Achieve Higher Performance When they Adopt a Raison D’être
  • Having a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy is Bad for Performance
  • The Best Strategy is to Set up an Attractive Business and Try to Beat Competitors
  • In Most Firms, Costs are too High
  • In the Digital Era, Having the Best or Cheapest Product is Enough for Success
  • A Firm Must Address its Weaknesses Before it Develops its Strengths
  • Business Success Depends Primarily on a Firm’s Capabilities
  • The Best Business Leaders are Visionaries
  • Businesses Benefit from Hiring Stars
  • Interviews are the Best Technique for Selecting New Employees
  • A Good Strategy is Enough for Success
  • It’s Easy to Drop a Strategy that has Failed to Deliver
  • Boards of Directors are Willing to Challenge Bad Strategy Decisions
  • Innovation Requires State-of-the-Art Technologies
  • To Innovate, Businesses Need Experts
  • Always Listen to Customers
  • Innovating Means Offering Customers New Products or Services
  • Businesses Innovate More When they have More Resources
  • Business Leaders have a Long-Term Outlook
  • It is Impossible to Reconcile the Long Term and the Short Term
  • A Firm that’s Improving is Headed for Success
  • Change is Always Good for Businesses
  • The First Thing to do in a Recession is Cut Costs
  • Process Management Improves Performance
  • Mergers and Acquisitions Create Value for Shareholders
  • Outsourcing is Good for Firms
  • Adopting Management Fads is Pointless
  • Financial Analysts Like Firms that Have an Original Strategy
  • Consultants Always Help Improve Performance
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