The Phoenix Effect

In this unpredictable economy, The Phoenix Effect: 9 Revitalizing Strategies No Business Can Do Without provides practical, strategic options to improve a struggling business or to further strengthen a healthy business. Carter Pate, a renewal specialist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Harlan Platt, a renowned professor of business and finance at Northeastern University, collaborate here to provide these essential strategies in accessible, highly actionable messages.

Full os insights and recommendations culled from the authors' work in rehabilitating a number of well-knwn companies, The Phoenix Effect defines the business strategies that can dramatically boost a company's performance and guides managerd on how to become true leaders even in the most challenging of times. Whether your company needs a tune-up, a turnaround, or a crisis action plan, these nine pivotal concepts offer the direction and knowledge to help virtually any business not only live up to its mission statement, but thrive in it.

The Phoenix Effect prepares business leaders for the chellenges ahead. It will help guide your decision-making — when to stay in the same business, when to withdraw from one or more aspects of a business, and when to expand. relevant case studies of successes and failures are provided to highlight the real-world effectiveness of each technique.

Why one company grows and another falters is a question with as many answers as there are businesses. Encompassing the all, however, are nine highly distilled strategies critical to business prosperity.

• Identifying the precise business problems you're facing
• Determining the scope of your market
• Orienting your business to differentiate your products from others
• Managing the scale of your operation
• Handling your debt
• Maximizing your assets
• Managing your employees
• Maximizing your products
• Finding more efficient methods in the process

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Get to the Point of Pain
  1. Get to the Point of Pain
  2. Determine the Scope
  3. Orient the Business
  4. Manage Scale
  5. Handle Debt
  6. Get the Most from Assets
  7. Get the Most from Employees
  8. Get the Most from Products
  9. Produce the Product
  10. Change the Process
  11. How You're Doing Is Where You're Going
• Chapter 2 Determine the Scope
  • Determining Direction
  • Factors That Affect Scope Decisons
    • The Big Picture
    • The Competitive Landscape
    • Social Change
    • Technological Change
    • Government Action, Regulation, and Laws
  • Broadening Scope
    • Ramifications from Broadening Scope
    • Making New Profit
    • Filling Gaps
    • Thwarting Competitors
    • Improving Resource Utilization
    • Strengthening Corporate Identity
  • Narrowing Scope
    • Reasons to Limit Scope
    • How to Narrow Scope
  • Maintaining Scope
  • Don't Change Scope by Default
• Chapter 3 Orient the Business
  • Discovering You Have an Orientation Problem
  • How Orientation Works
    • Laura Ashley Holdings PLC
    • Marriott International, Inc.
  • The Keys to a Successful Orientation
    • Value
    • Utility
  • Setting Orientation
  • Changing Orientation
• Chapter 4 Manage Scale
  • The Quest for Larger Scale
  • How Not to Lose the Scale Advantage
• Chapter 5 Handle Debt
  • Some Basic Definitions
  • Restructuring
  • Renegotiation
  • Getting the Best Deal
  • Mergers
• Chapter 6 Get the Most from Assets
  • The Wisdom of Regular Checkups
  • Minding the Nuts and Bolts
  • Current Assets
  • Current Liabilities
  • Coordinating Assets and Liabilities
• Chapter 7 Get the Most from Employees
  • The Employee Audit
  • Incentives
  • Cooperation
  • Handling Big Layoffs
• Chapter 8 Get the Most from Products
  • Products and Strategy
    • Cosmetic Changes
    • Expensive or Product Platform Changes
    • Product Deletions
  • Product Characteristics
    • Appearance
    • Brand Status
    • Price Responsiveness
  • Pricing Tactics
• Chapter 9 Produce the Product
  • Efficiency and Automation Have Their Limits
  • Managing the Inputs That Shape Your Plant
  • Combining Operations: The Sharing Option
  • When — and When Not — to Outsource
  • Closing Plants
• Chapter 10 Change the Process
  • Process Improvement ABCs
  • Time-Efficient Processes
  • Cost-Efficient Processes
  • Quality-Efficient Processes
  • The Product Makes the Process
• Epilogue
• Sources and Suggested Reading

Sure, but why?

The book is extremely superficial and the nine points that are proposed are covered very broadly. In fact, I could probably come up with their nine points (ten chapters) myself, by simply looking at my old MBA material. I don't doubt that Pate is a turn-around expert, but this isn't his bible. More likely, it is his presentation on why you should hire him, but without him personally talking.

In my opinion, you can safely skip this book.