Business Builders Recommended Reading List

Strategy
	Hugh Courtney In the midst of a changing economy, most executives continue to use a strategy toolkit designed for yesterday's more stable marketplace. As a result, strategies emerge that neither manage the risks nor take advantage of the opportunities that arise in highly uncertain times. Now, McKinsey & Company consultant Hugh Courtney argues that managers must move beyond the outdated "all-or-nothing" view of strategy in which future events are either certain or uncertain. Instead, he suggests a simple-yet powerful-alternative: Understand the level of uncertainty you are facing in a given situation, and you will make better, more informed strategic choices.
	40 Strategies for Winning in Business Bud Haney, Jim Sirbasku In this book the authors have distilled the wisdom of hundreds of authors, business leaders, philosophers, Ph.D.s, speakers, teachers, preachers, and personal acquaintances, along with techniques they developed during many decades of operating several businesses. They have concluded that less than half of the books, seminars, classes, speakers, etc. were worth the time they consumed. They are also of the opinion only about 20 percent of the ideas and concepts "experts" promote have actual practical application in developing winning business strategies. In this book you will find the 20 percent that work.
	Leonard Goodstein, Timothy Nolan, J. William Pfeiffer Written by three top consultants and trainers, "Applied Strategic Planning" shows managers and CEOs a clear, effective way to identify and implement strategic objectives. Their strategic planning model places emphasis on organizational culture, the integration of business and functional plans, the performance audit, and gap analysis. Values clarification is explicitly confronted in a systematic way early in the process. Goodstein, Nolan, and Pfeiffer take managers through all phases of the strategic planning process, including how to determine if an organization is ready for strategic planning; effectively communicate a corporate vision; recognize the role of culture in changing strategic direction; understand the various roles of a consultant; write effective mission statements; and create contingency plans. Charts, diagrams, and checklists make the book especially helpful, as well as illuminating examples from the authors' extensive consulting experience, and even cartoons that convey important points. Back to Top
	Chris Zook All companies must grow to survive-but only one in five growth strategies succeeds. In Profit from the Core, strategy expert Chris Zook revealed how to grow profitably by focusing on and achieving full potential in the core business. But what happens when your core business provides insufficient new growth, or even hits the wall? Back to Top
	James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras Groundbreaking research intothe development of America's most enduring and successful corporations thatshatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance forcompanies that would like to follow in their footsteps. Back to Top
	Jay Galbraith, Diane Sowney, Amy Kates Which business structures are best suited to the unpredictable 21st century? How can a company, division, or department reconfigure itself with minimum disruption and maximum impact? Every executive grapples with problems of restructuring--and most need hands-on guidance to solve them. This eye-opening book shows business leaders at all levels how to examine their choices by leading them systematically through these fundamental questions: * Should we restructure to meet our strategic goals? * What are the best structural options to achieve our success? * What lateral processes are necessary to support the new structure? * How do we staff the restructured organization to optimize results? Based on Galbraith's world-renowned approach, this guide includes examples and worksheets that pilot readers through the essential steps of organizational design. Back to Top
	Jay R. Galbraith If there's anything more challenging than designing a company, it's designing a global company. Balancing strategy and structure becomes even more daunting when geography, foreign governments, and worldwide customers and products are thrown into the mix. And no single design works for all organizations. In this book, internationally recognized expert Jay Galbraith shows companies how to match their own strengths and strategies with proven design options. Whether they're exporting their first product or already operating around the world, Galbraith gives companies the information they need to build flexible, global networks. And through real-world examples, he shows how successful international businesses are already navigating the global environment. Back to Top
	Jim Collins Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. Back to Top
	Rod Napier, Patrick Sanaghan, Clint Sidle, Patrick Saraghan Not just another book on the theory of strategic planning, here are dozens of recipes for creative group activities to facilitate strategic planning in any organization. Designed for use by consultants, facilitators, and management team leaders, step-by-step instructions guide you through exercises for gaining employee and management participation, gathering feedback from management about the current state of the organization, creating an organized mission, vison and values statement, and planning so that the vision becomes reality. Ready-to-use reproducible materials and handouts are also included. Back to Top
	The One Page Business Plan Jim Horan The Fastest, Easiest Way To Write A Business Plan It doesn't have to take agonizing meetings, pounds of documents, or endless spreadsheets to produce a meaningful business plan. A single page can contain all of the essential elements you need to successfully present your ideas to management, banks, the SBA, venture capitalists, and Boards of Directors. This new addition includes The One Page Entrepreneur's Toolkit CD-ROM with templates, worksheets, sales calculators, budgets, scorecards, and bonus tools. "In his valuable, The One Page Business Plan, Jim Horan not only removes the mystique from business plans, but also leads you by the hand through crafting the best plan possible: clear, focused, understandable and concise. I consider the book to be a significant contribution to business literature." Jay Conrad Levinson, Author Guerilla Marketing series of books Back to Top
	Dan Ciampa, Michael Watkins According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, 64 percent of executives hired form the outside won't make it in their new jobs. While executives from within the ranks know the challenges, culture, and politics of a company, newcomers face a corporate minefield. Right from the Start is Ciampa and Watkins's survival manual for leaders taking starting work at a new company. "Leadership is never easy," they write. "This is never truer than when a new leader enters an organization from the outside and must change its culture in fundamental ways." Through interviews with dozens of corporate leaders who have succeeded or failed in such transitions, the authors provide a strategy for getting it right from the outset. Ciampa, an independent consultant, and Watkins, a Harvard Business School associate professor, advise three key missions for new leaders: Create momentum; master the ability to learn, convey a vision, and build coalitions; and know and manage yourself well. A fast start is especially crucial. In fact, they say, the most important period starts with the recruitment or interview process and runs through the first six months in a new role. Right from the Start provides plenty of real-life examples of successes and failures, in everything from building coalitions to changing corporate culture. The stories tend to suffer sometimes because the executives remain anonymous. Nonetheless, the book is instructive for business people assuming new management roles. Back to Top
	Gerald Nadler, William Chandon Smart Questions offers an entirely new framework for creating solutions. Drawn from the authors' many years of research and field experience, the Smart Questions Approach reveals how the leading creators of solutions in almost every profession and walk of life—including business, government, education, and even in families—think and approach their assignments. The author’s holistic thinking approach shows how to use three “foundation” questions—focusing on uniqueness, purposeful information, and systems—which must be explored for every problem. These three questions, an essential starting point for exploring problems, in turn lead to other key questions that will ultimately create effective solutions. Back to Top
	Roger Kaufman, Hugh Oakley-Brown, Ryan Watkins, Doug Leigh Strategic Planning for Success offers you a pragmatic guide to the design and development of practical and pragmatic strategic thinking and organizational alignment that will yield high-impact results and measurably add value to you, your organization, your clients, and society. Unlike other books on the topic, this volume goes beyond simply detailing the tools and techniques of design and development by clearly showing how to align what you do with what will be most valuable to all stakeholders. Using this unique approach will yield extraordinary results adding measurable value that flows from individual performance accomplishment to organizational and societal contributions. Back to Top
	Sunil Chopra, Peter Meindl For advanced undergraduate and MBA courses in Supply Chain Management. This book brings together the strategic role of the supply chain, key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and the tools and techniques for supply chain analysis. Every chapter gives suggestions that managers can use in practice and all methodologies are illustrated with an application in Excel. Fully updated material keeps the book on the forefront of supply chain management. Distribution networks (Chapter 4); Sourcing (Chapter 13), discusses different sourcing activities including supplier assessment, supplier contracts, design collaboration, and procurement; Price and revenue management (Chapter 15); Early coverage of designing the supply chain network—after developing a strategic framework, readers can discuss supply chain network design in Chapters 5 and 6 and then move on to demand, supply, inventory, and transportation planning; Information Technology in the Supply Chain (Chapter 17). For business professionals managing the supply chain. Back to Top
	Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton Putting Strategy at the Heart of the Organization: A Powerful New Approach to Performance Management from the Creators of the Balanced Scorecard In today's business environment, strategy has never been more important. Yet research shows that most companies fail to execute strategy successfully. Behind this abysmal track record lies an undeniable fact: many companies continue to use management processes-top-down, financially driven, and tactical-that were designed to run yesterday's organizations. Back to Top
	Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action. Back to Top
	C. Davis Fogg How to structure, facilitate, and implement the process. Strategic planning is a critical part of running a business, but when you get a team of people together to plan, it can often become a confused exercise in grand visions without a clear process for establishing workable goals. This book is unique in providing both guidance for the actual content of strategic plans and techniques for how to plan in a team context. Readers will discover how to: • structure the process so it custom fits their company needs • effectively facilitate the process (keep meetings on track, train others in planning skills, document decisions made at meetings, present and communicate the plan) • use teams and teamwork smoothly and productively to create a far-reaching plan—and then to implement it Features detailed guidelines for each step, dozens of flowcharts, and three self-contained "facilitator’s guides" to follow.

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