Strategy

Do you want to develop a counterintuitive strategy insight and/or lead a team to develop a counterintuitive strategy insight?

You have enough experience to know that frameworks, decision trees, applying MECE and 80/20 principles, hypotheses, and structured problem solving are important, but they are not enough. You know a brilliant insight often looks like a mediocre insight. A great strategy often looks like a bad strategy. Analysis is messy. Data is flawed and misleading. Best practices routinely fail. Hypotheses change. Data changes. Linear thinking often does not work.

This book helps solve this problem. We present the background to a client. You get to follow the design of the strategy study and watch how the solution is developed. Over the past 10 years on StrategyTraining.com and FIRMSconsulting.com, you have seen us help numerous clients solve complex business problems: developing a big data strategy, a corporate strategy, a digital & IT strategy, a pandemic & disaster strategy, a luxury brands strategy, a turnaround & transformation strategy, and more — all based on the combined best practices of the author and the ex-McKinsey, BCG et al., partners who produce all the strategy training programs on StrategyTraining.com.

This book shows you the daily steps, actions, processes, and considerations that go into developing a unique insight for a major company under tight timelines and intense scrutiny. You will get to see which data is used, why it was used, which data was discarded and why it was discarded.

On a daily and weekly basis, you will see us use strategy considerations, engagement update reports, storyboards, analyses tools, strategy maps, client management tools and more, summarizing the best practices from ex-McKinsey, BCG et al., partners and our most successful clients, to help you solve mankind's most pressing problems. The book helps you learn the process to solve strategy and business problems like a strategy partner. You will get to see the numerous contradictions, nuances, and trade-offs that the highest-performing strategy thinkers face. You will learn how to make ethical and balanced decisions based on who is the client and who is not the client. The core of this book revolves around the daily guides to show you how the study is designed, planned, staffed, structured, and run, all the way from focus interviews to day-in-the-life-of studies to financial analysis, financial modeling, and case studies. The book is divided into weeks. Each week is split into days. Days are split into key activities and observations from the study.

While we can't guarantee the results of each reader, clients who have used the book and FIRMSconsulting Insiders who have used the accompanying online training program consisting of 270+ videos on which the book is based report:

• Deeper insights
• Greater recognition
• Rapid promotions
• Deeper understanding of executives
• Happier teams
• Greater productivity
• Project success
• Superior assignments

The book takes you step by step, week by week and day by day through the process to receive a problem, frame the problem, structure the analysis, assemble the team, manage the team, and manage the client toward the solution. You get to go inside the mind of a strategy partner. That is the greatest benefit of this book. At times you will see references to additional resources that our most loyal members, FIRMSconsulting Insiders and SLIDES members, have access should they need to dive deeper into a specific topic (e.g., competitive strategy, digital & IT strategy, implementation, problem-solving, etc.).

Note: Due to the page number restrictions for print books, this book is split into two parts. You can follow the rest of the engagement in Part 1.

• Week 2 / Part 2: First Executive Update
1. What Will Wheaton, Kim Kardashian, the Russian Military, and President John F. Kennedy can teach us about strategy
2. Client meetings are not a spectator sport
3. A strong endorsement from the client on the engagement direction
4. Develop a culture of giving immediate, honest, direct, helpful, and constructive feedback
5. The CEO agreed with all focus areas and initial hypotheses
6. A team of interns with no experience is doing very well
7. Understanding the role of a development bank
8. Many executives seek coaching when they actually need training
9. Having the best analyses will not make you a great consultant
10. #1 Nimisha, #2 Peter, #3 Albert
• Week 3: Case Studies, Analyses, Key Issues and Modeling
1. Case studies have not yet identified a bank that is sustainably profitable in this loan-segment size
2. Modular thinking is probably the best way to build financial models
3. Higher interest rates compensate for risky loans but also lead to higher defaults, thereby driving up the risk
4. Good models simplify complex issues
5. Conventional wisdom is usually not right
6. Companies can only have one true competitive advantage
7. A bank can usually compete on price or risk
8. The only validation of a strategy is its successful implementation
9. A critical skill is to constantly refine and share hypotheses
10. Banks need to work as teams for the greater good
11. Copying the best firms is not a sustainable strategy for a boutique
12. Do not take comfort in sifting through wasteful analyses for insights
13. Be careful building your preeminence around models
14. Perfection requires a lot of feedback and communication
15. LAB is doing very rudimentary reviews to check that the banks are honoring their service-level agreements
16. Be careful of following a popular narrative for a complex issue
17. Unique databases are not so unique
18. Precision is a strategist's Achilles heel
19. Your personal views should not influence the recommendations
• Week 4 / Part 1: Entrepreneurs and Case Studies
1. View commitments as a financial option
2. Sell by showing value and not by directly selling
3. Any investment your firm makes in you must have a clear benefit to the firm and/or client
4. A best-practice idea can only work for your client if the environment is the same as that at the company where it was first applied
5. When the strategy and operations are not aligned, a company is failing
6. How you communicate a finding is just as important as the finding
• Week 4 / Part 2: Second Executive Update Meeting
1. Doing what is in the client's best interest routinely means disagreeing with the client
2. Entering a market is not the objective of any client in a market-entry strategy engagement
• Week 5: Finalizing Recommendations for Second CEO Update
1. Sectors with declining revenue per job created are dying
2. Poor is a relative term, and it depends on whom you ask to define the term
3. Sectors where LAB should invest
4. We do not recommend LAB take over the DFI retail branch network in the United States
5. Focus on the logic of the insights and not the coolness of the analytical tools
6. The story is what captivates and compels the client to act
7. Always remember who is your client
• Week 6: Realign the Study
1. Without focusing on sales, notice how driving the right issues leads to sales
2. Doing something just because it is cool is not wise
3. Corporate strategy consultants need not require buy-in from middle and lower management
4. A firm's image is not determined by the 1% who get in: it is in the eyes, hearts, and minds of the 99% who are declined
5. The client wants us to do another engagement
6. Keeping the team members focused…
7. Very few people understand a balance sheet
8. Running a strategy engagement is different from simply having strategy analysis skills
• Week 7 / Part 1 & Part 2: The Findings
1. The third CEO and exco update
2. A great consultant shares everything
3. Organization alignment engagements are complex since they are tough to analyze
4. Get out all the tough and embarrassing questions in the pre-presents
5. The recommendations and findings have led to a power shift at LAB
• Week 8: One Engagement Ends, Another Begins
1. Complacency is your worst possible enemy
2. The team is tired as it prepares for the next stage
3. Nonnumerical analyses are much tougher to perform
4. Decision tree for the organization alignment engagement
5. A strategy approach to designing a resilient organization structure
6. The engagement comes to its natural conclusion

A very good book on how to apply a number of tools and approaches to a management consulting engagement.

I like the writing style, even if the use of a fictional case study always make it a bit harder to swallow. Admittedly, they make it a lot better than a number of their competitors.

If you're interested in management consulting, this is really recommended reading, but be aware of that this is the second part of two (you really need both Book One and Book Two).