Essential Managers: Strategic Thinking - Softcover

Bruce, Andy; Langdon, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0789459728 ISBN 13: 9780789459725

Publisher: DK, 2000

Synopsis

Learn how to plan, develop, and implement dynamic business and team strategies with strategic thinking. This concise and informative guide shows you how to identify the route to success by gathering and analyzing key information, setting short- and long-term objectives, developing your team-leadership skills, predicting future trends, and maintaining a flexible approach.

Strategic Thinking covers the essential tools of strategic management, from SWOT analysis and feasibility studies to budgeting forecasts and contingency plans, to help give you a competitive edge in today's fast-moving business world. Experienced and novice managers alike can benefit from these compact guides that slip easily into a briefcase or a portfolio.  The topics are relevant to every work environment, from large corporations to small businesses.  Concise treatments of dozens of business techniques, skills, methods, and problems are presented with hundreds of photos, charts, and diagrams. It is the most exciting and accessible approach to business and self-improvement available.

The DK Essential Managers series covers a range of business and management topics and has sold more than two million copies worldwide. Each guide is clearly presented for ease of reference, with visual pointers, tips, and graphics.

About this title

Review:

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, you might not always get what you want from this short 'n' sweet little guidebook on strategic thinking and planning, but you just might get what you need. That would include concise and handy visual and verbal tips on gathering and analyzing key information, setting short- and long-term objectives, developing your team leadership skills, predicting future trends, and maintaining a flexible approach throughout. It also covers the essential tools of strategic management, from SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) analysis and feasibility studies to budgeting forecasts and contingency plans. Granted, if you're looking for specific or in-depth guidance--say, how to do strategic thinking in a particular field, like biotechnology, or a particular division, like human resources--you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basic steps of strategic planning, both individually and in a group setting, this may do you just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy

From the Inside Flap:

Learn how to define, develop, and implement a dynamic business strategy with Strategic Thinking. This concise and informative guide shows you how to plan short- and long-term objectives, how to put together the right team for the job, how to communicate your vision, and how to maintain a flexible approach by monitoring past performance and predicting future trends. It covers the essential tools of strategic management, from feasibility studies to budgeting forecasts, to help give you a competitive edge in today's fast-moving and ever-changing business world.

About this edition

• Publisher: DK
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0789459728
• ISBN 13: 9780789459725
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72