All the Right Moves: A Guide to Crafting Break- Through Strategy

All the Right Moves Markides provides a cohesive and comprehensive guide to crafting breakthrough strategy for ANY organization. The basic premise of his book is that "superior strategy is all about finding and exploiting a unique strategy in the company's business while at the same time searching for new strategic positions on a continuing basis." He organizes his materials as follows: Part I How to Create a Unique Strategic Position * How to decide what your business is * How to decide who your customers and what to offer to them * How to "play the game" * How to identity and secure strategic assets and capabilities * How to create the right organization environment * How to develop a superior strategic position Part II How to Prepare for Strategic Innovation * How strategic positions develop * How to evaluate and respond to strategic innovation * How to take a dynamic view of strategy In the final chapter, Markides concedes that "designing a successful strategy is a never-ending quest. Even the most successful companies must continually question the basis of their business and the assumptions underlying their 'formula for success.' (In fact, in one way or another, this is what most successful companies have done to get where they are.). New who/what/how positions are constantly popping up around the mass market, and established companies must be on the lookout for them. Like a modern-day Christopher Columbus, each company must set out to explore its industry's evolving terrain, searching for new and unexploited strategic positions." In this brilliant book, Markides explains HOW.

Markides argues:"The essence of strategy is to choose the one position that your company will claim as its own. A strategic position is simply the sum of a company's answers to these three questions: Who should I target as customers? What products or services should I offer them? How should I do this? ... Ultimately, strategy is all about making choices, [to achieve] a distinctive strategic position ... The most common source of strategic failure is the failure to make clear and explicit choices in each of these three dimensions."In itself, the statement is simple, even obvious. But, as he points out, many companies fail to make these explicit choices. The value of the book lies in how the author works through these propositions. The advice is good common sense, laced with valuable insights. The language is clear and simple. The approach is systemic - the author is as concerned with how all the elements fit together within a dynamic market as with the elements themselves. Each chapter ends with a good summary of the arguments.Even highly complex and highly dynamic strategies rest on these simple foundations. The book therefore provides both an excellent guide for those new to wrestling with strategy and excellent 'mental furniture' with which to approach more complex formulations.

All the Right Moves grapples with the issues which form the essence of the strategic management field. Professor Markides provides readers with a landscape for strategy which covers: 1) positioning, 2) business system interdependence, and 3) dynamics of competition. Positioning is recouched in an easy to understand and apply framework based on a new Who-What-How combination. An important message is that positioning is only part of the story. Once position is determined, management must coordinate a complex system of interrelated and interdependent activities which typically extend beyond our cognitive limits of bounded rationality. Further, once these activities are coordinated for one position, the firm cannot stand still. Competitive dynamics erode away any advantage over time, and therefore firms must continuously question their positioning . I whole-heartedly recommend this refreshing and thought provoking book to managers and academics alike.

This is a mindsetting book. In strategy one needs to ask the right questions to get the right answers. If you want to know what questions to ask then have a read. This is a well written, excellently structured book that should be on the must list of any manager that is formulating strategy. If you thought defining what is strategy is difficult then what about making decisions on What to offer, Who to target and How to do it. It's this sort of simple revealing answers that one finds in this book. It is simply excellent.

This is one of the best written strategy books I've ever come across. Simple, clear, with lots of real case examples and a systematic approach to crafting a winning strategy. What makes it really supreme over other textbooks is that most of the propositions put forward, seem both plausible and feasible. A real masterpiece.