Systems Thinking Strategy: The New Way to Understand Your Business and Drive Performance - Hardcover

Brown PhD, Jimmy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1475957718 ISBN 13: 9781475957716

Publisher: iUniverse, 2012

Synopsis

Why are some organizations more successful than others? Is it better products? Is it a superior service model? Is it some mixture of the two? Is it merely a matter of lining up the products and services to meet the needs of the marketplace at a particular time? Or did they just get lucky? Many business leaders believe that the answer to these questions is a matter of strategy.  Find the right strategy and the company is bound to be successful. 

Unfortunately, too many organizations fail to find that right strategy.  The question is why?  Do they not go on enough executive retreats?  Did they hire the wrong consultants? Were their PowerPoint slides just now powerful enough?  While any of these factors could be a contributor, our research shows that the real driver is strategy efforts focusing too much on singular dimensions (e.g., the competition) rather than considering the entire ecosystem.  Without a full view of the complete business environment, it is impossible to make fully informed decisions.  Without being fully informed, we risk making the wrong choices.  

The Systems Thinking Strategy addresses this issue by providing a holistic approach that incorporates multiple domains into the strategy discussion.  By incorporating systems thinking (e.g., Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline) into the strategic planning process, we are able to understand how our Capabilities, our Customers, and the Competitive Environment are all interacting and impacting our business success.  It then provides an approach to making sense of those disparate data points so that we can make the right decisions to drive business success.

About this title

About the Author

Jimmy Brown, PhD, is the Strategy Practice Area Lead at Beacon Associates, where he is responsible for change management, organizational assessment/effectiveness, performance improvement, and business strategy consulting engagements. He is a frequent author and speaker onthe topics of business strategy and organizational change, and is regularly sought out for his insights on how to apply cutting-edge theory to solve real-world challenges. Dr. Brown received his master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Tulsa, and his PhD from Benedictine University's award-winning organizational development program. In addition to his consulting work, he is a professor in several graduate psychology and management programs. He can be contacted at jimmybrownphd.com.

From the Back Cover

Dr. Brown's thesis not only makes sense, but his identification of the "sense-making" processes that yield strategic decisions is profound, and it can be used both internally as a planning approach, and as a tool for competitive analysis. And he has the research to back up his insights. STS is truly an operating system for 21st century business.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, author, Tell The Truth: Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, & Branding Only Works on Cattle



Dr. Brown has accomplished a rare feat with his book-he has taken the overused and often misunderstood notion of organizational strategy and provided a clear and practical definition coupled with a pragmatic model grounded in systems thinking that offers a potential roadmap for firms to better leverage their organic capabilities and gain a competitive advantage in the business landscape. The book reads well and can be readily utilized by planners and leaders in today's workplace.
Tim Goodly, PhD Senior Vice President Human Resources Fortune 100 Company


Dr. Brown provides a very insightful analysis of what it takes to formulate a successful organizational strategy that ensures sustainable competitive advantage. The cornerstone of his reasoning is that much like other systems, strategy should take into consideration competitive, capabilities, and customer focused approaches toward strategy making and that can be only be fully realized through organizational sense-making processes. The "Systems Thinking Strategy" has many lessons to offer on strategy formulation for contemporary organizations. I recommend this as a "must read book" for all interested in organizational strategy formulation and practice.
Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Professor of Organization Change PhD Program in Organization Development and Change Benedictine University

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1475957718
• ISBN 13: 9781475957716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 132