Strategic Learning: How to Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights into Competitive Advantage

by Willie Pietersen

How to use Strategic Learning to rapidly respond to change and gain a sustainable advantage over your competitors What's even harder than creating a breakthrough strategy? Making it stick. As companies are fighting to survive in a tough economy, this new book by Willie Pietersen demonstrates the power of the Strategic Learning process, a four-step dynamic cycle guaranteed to create and sustain winning performance. Adopted by a wide range of corporations and not-for-profit organizations, the Strategic Learning process builds on eight years of practicing, adapting and honing the original concepts Pietersen first introduced in Reinventing Strategy to explain how organizations can generate superior insights about their customers and competitors, craft a Winning Proposition, focus on a vital few key priorities, create buy-in throughout the organization and achieve success – again and again. Strategic Learning shows you how your business or nonprofit organization can develop better, more effective strategies for long-term competitive advantage.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 2010

Reviews

[Haur Bin Chua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strategic learning process:
1. Learn: situation analysis to generate outside in insights
2. Focus: translate insights into winning propositions and priorities
3. Align: align total organisation and energise people
4. Execute: implement strategy and experiment

Key lessons:
- To find great answers, we must discover great questions; keep an open mind and be critical
- Simplicity is the new springboard for success. A strategy needs to be expressed in as few words as possible. To distill a good strategy down to simplicity is hard work
- Strategy means thinking from outside-in, this is not something that can be done easily and naturally as we tend to look internally
- Point of strategy is to win the battle for value creation. Strategy must define how much organisation will win the competition for value creation, not just spiral to nothingness in cost cutting. Both ends of the elastic band
- Strategy is everyone’s business, not just the managers. But it is the leaders’ job to create a compelling case, define the direction and strategic goals, energise the organization and convert the resistance to realise the creation of value gap vs competition
- Strategy and leadership are essential parts of each other - goes without saying. However most leaders, being action oriented, gravitate towards the planning and execution part of strategy. Important to complete the process and as painful as it sounds, drive the continual renewal process because it’s either we change or the world will change for us

[Jim Razinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see this as a book on strategic leadership - the "learning" part of the title perhaps implies that the reader must learn how to be strategic. As it is a core text for a management program I am a part of, I will re-read it at least once more this year and likely get more out of it (I did make quite a few margin notes and flag points I thought were key, but there is always more to learn.) For now, the jury is out on whether to recommend or not.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know why this book exists. There does not seem to be much that has not been said by many people before when it comes to effective leadership and management.

The author gives good guidelines for bringing focus to an organization and alignment to its mission and people, it just doesn't seem particularly different than what someone like Lencioni or Kouzes and Posner have said before him. If you haven't read them then, sure, read this. Otherwise, not a lot of new stuff to learn here.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading for work, but worth it. Takes strategy formation to the "next level".

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well structured book, with relevant examples (eg. Girl Scouts re-definition). Fantastic reminder to not just get stuck in day-to-day, but ensure a strategy is part of your rhythm.