The Strategy Journal

You need to solve a critical business problem. What if you had one tool that you could carry into meetings and write inside that guided you step-by-step to understand the problem, develop a structure, develop hypotheses, design the tests for the hypotheses, track your daily and weekly tasks, plan the message for your team and manager, manage the project, guide you through critical update meetings, calculate the benefits case to convince your colleagues and start the pilot implementation of your recommendations?

Now you do.

The Strategy Journal is the field guide to our popular book Succeeding as a Management Consultant.This Journal helps readers walk into any situation in any organization anywhere in the world and solve their most pressing business problems via to-do list prompts, self-assessments and strategy calendars. 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.

The Strategy Journal was used by many of our very successful clients and summarizes the approach we used to help them increase their productivity, transform their careers, set daunting career goals, outperform peers and measure the value they create.

Through daily and weekly prompts, to-do list guides, client reminders, end-of-day scorecards, templates, completed examples, checklists and reminders, the Journal takes 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 Journal helps you learn the routine to solve strategy and business problems like a partner. As you follow the guide, you will learn the habits of the highest-performing strategy thinkers. The Journal teaches you how to be a balanced and successful professional with a strong ethical compass.

The heart of this Journal revolves around the pages to plan your study: from clarifying the problem statement all the way to developing the presentation and quantifying the benefits case in $.

The Journal is divided into 3 parts:

• Overview,
• Guided Example,
• and Your Study.

The OVERVIEW offers you a 1-page guide to the entire process we will use to create a highly customized solution for your client.

In the GUIDED EXAMPLE, we will work together through a study/project to show you how each page will be used.

Thereafter, we create daily/weekly templates and guides for you to use on YOUR STUDY. Clients who have used the Journal report:

• A sense of purpose
• Rapid promotions
• Career fulfillment
• Happier colleagues
• Improved skills
• Increased productivity
• Increased focus
• Client success

THERE ARE 16 TYPES OF PAGES IN THIS WORKBOOK:

1. Project Logic and Overview
2. Decision-Tree of Options
3. Hypotheses & Hypotheses Tests
4. Storyboarding
5. Charter
6. Timeline
7. Project Update Report
8. Focus Interviews
9. Executive Update Guide
10. Financial Analyses
11. Benchmarks
12. Case Studies
13. Project Checklist
14. Opportunity Chart
15. Benefits Chart
16. Daily Pages

The Journal summarizes the most important things you need to do and eliminates all the noise from the process.

• Start Here
• The Overall Approach: Refer to This Page Throughout the Study
• A Guided Example
• day 1 & 2 of the Study: Planning 
• step 1: Build a Decision-Tree of Options to Solve the Problem
• step 2: Develop Your Hypotheses for the Prioritized Options
• step 3: Design Your Analyses to Test the Hypotheses
• step 4: Build, Refine and Test Your Preliminary Storyboard
• step 5: Finish Your Storyboard aka Analyses Plan
• Tools to Help the Client and Your Team
• step 6: Develop Your Charter
• step 7: Develop your Project Logic
• step 8: Adapt Your Timeline and Set Milestones
• step 9: Prepare Your Weekly Team Updates
• week 1 of the Study: Preparing for the 1^st Client Update
• step 10: Overall Approach: Validation + Analyses
• step 11: Prepare the Focus Interviews: Sole Content for the 1^st Executive Update
• Step 12: Prepare the Slides for the 1^st Executive Update
• step 13: The 1^st Executive Update
• week 2 to 4 of the Study: Preparing for the 2^nd Client Update
• step 14: Begin Two Types of Analyses
• step 15: Complete the Financial Analyses
• step 16: Complete the Financial Benchmarking
• step 17: Complete the Case Studies
• step 18: Prepare the Slides for the 2^nd Executive Update
• step 19: The 2^nd Executive Update
• step 20: Validate Your Preliminary Storyboard
• week 5 to 6 of The Study: Preparing for the 3^rd Client Update
• step 21: Complete the Analyses
• step 22: Document Opportunities to the Client as You Find Them
• step 23: Agree Opportunity Calculations, With Employees, So They Become Benefits
• step 24: The 3^rd Executive Update
• week 7 to 8 of The Study: Preparing for the 4^th Client Update
• step 25: The 4^th Executive Update
• Work on Your Study
• step a: Build a Decision-Tree of Options to Solve the Problem
• step b: Develop Your Hypothesis for Each Prioritized
• step c: Write Out the Test for Each Hypothesis, Include X and Y Axes for Each Graph
• step d+e: Write the Main Finding from Each Test and Arrange the Preliminary Storyboard
• step f+g: Complete Your Charter and, If Needed, Adapt the Project Logic
• step h: Adapt Your Timeline & Complete Your Expectations Exchange
• week 1 of the Study: Preparing for the 1^st Client Update
• step i: Prepare Your Focus Interview Questions: Sole Content for the 1^st Executive Update
• step j: Prepare the Slides for the 1^st Executive Update
• step k: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 2 of the Study: Complete the Financial Analyses and Start Testing Hypothesis
• step l: Act on the Next Steps from the 1^st Client Update Meeting
• step m: Complete the Financial Analyses
• step n: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 3 of the Study: Completing the Case Studies and Benchmarks
• step o: Complete the Benchmarking
• step p: Complete the Case Studies
• step q: Complete the Case Studies
• step r: Complete the Case Studies
• step s: Prepare the Slides for the 2^nd Executive Update
• step t: Hold your Weekly Team Update
• week 4 of the Study: The 2^nd Client Update
• step u: Act on the Next Steps from the 2^nd Executive Update
• step v: Validate Your Preliminary Storyboard
• step w: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 5 of the Study: Finish Testing Hypotheses and Generate Opportunity Charts
• step x: Finish the Analyses to Test the Hypotheses and Complete the Storyboard
• step y: Document and Validate Opportunity #1
• step z: Document and Validate Opportunity #2
• step aa: Document and Validate Opportunity #3
• step ab: Document and Validate Opportunity #4
• step ac: Document and Validate Opportunity #5
• step ad: Document and Validate Opportunity #6
• step ae: Document and Validate Opportunity #7
• step af: Document and Validate Opportunity #8
• step ag: Document and Validate Opportunity #9
• step ah: Document and Validate Opportunity #10
• step ai: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 6 of the Study: The 3^rd Client Update
• step aj: Prepare the Slides for the 3^rd Executive Update
• step ak: Act on the Next Steps from the 3^rd Executive Update
• step al: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 7 of the Study: Start the Quick Wins Implementation
• step am: Quick Win #1 to Implement in the Next 2 weeks
• step an: Quick Win #2 to Implement in the Next 2 weeks
• step ao: Quick Win #3 to Implement in the Next 2 weeks
• step ap: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• week 8 of the Study: Preparing for the 4^th Client Update and Implementation
• step aq: Preparing for the 4sup>th Executive Update
• step ar: The 4^th Executive Update
• step as: Hold Your Weekly Team Update
• End of Study
• step at: How I Will Become a Better Strategist

Sigh, this is a complementary book to the authors other books, and have very little value outside of that realm.

With that said, it mostly contains forms that are repeated a number of times, and the actual text is approx 25% of the book.

It is not bad, but don't buy it outside of the authors other books and expect to learn something from it (admittedly, there is nothing wrong with the forms, except their repetitions)