Must-Win Battles: Creating the Focus You Need to Achieve Your Key Business Goals (Financial Times Series)

Must Win Battles shows business leaders how to identify and agree on the key critical challenges that will make or break their business, and helps them to mobilize their people and resources to achieve those goals.

• The book is structured like the executive programme at IMD upon which it is based, and is full of the real voices of participants who have made the MWB "journey".
• It is positioned squarely in the growing execution/delivery space in the market, and plays to the personal and performance approaches that are dominating leadership.
• Reveals a tested framework for deciding what is "must-win," as opposed to merely urgent or everyday.
• Shows how to focus people, resources and time on the most decisive activities and challenges.
• Real leaders and managers speak directly from the pages to the reader, describing their whole MWB journey.
• Positioning: Unique. Unlike other books, Must-Win Battles bridges the gap between strategy development and implementation by tackling the intellectual and emotional challenges simultaneously. 

Peter Killing and Tom Malnight are Professors of Strategy at IMD. The ideas in this book come directly from their extensive work with management teams across many countries, and in both large and small organizations, who are creating winning strategies using the must-win battle concepts.  From these experiences it is abundantly clear that the "intellectual" approach to strategy is not enough. What Peter, Tom and the managers highlighted in this book believe is that "strategic priorities with heart" will win the day.

At IMD Peter runs company-specific programs for companies such as Nestlé, BMW, PepsiCo International, Scottish & Newcastle, Tetra Laval and Tate & Lyle. Tom’s experience includes work with companies including Unilever, A.P. Moller - Maersk Group, Masterfoods, Firmenich, Carlsberg and Adecco. He also directs IMD's Booster program, an intensive program focusing on accelerating project and team development, while Peter runs the Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives and Mastering New Challenges, a program for managers about to take on new responsibilities.

Both Tom and Peter have written widely on the topics of strategy, change and leadership, in publications ranging from the Harvard Business Review to the Academyof Management Journal. Peter is a co-author of a strategy text, Strategic Analysis and Action, which is currently in its sixth edition.

Tom has a DBA from the HarvardBusinessSchooland was on the faculty of The Wharton School for seven years before joining IMD.  Before his doctorate, he spent ten years with Mitsubishi International Corporation, including two years in Japan.  Peter holds a PhD from the IveyBusinessSchoolin Canada, where he taught for twenty years and was Associate Dean of Executive Education at the time he came to IMD.

Tracey Keys  has twenty years of experience as a consultant and manager, focused on complex strategy and organisational issues.   She has worked with companies in the media, consumer goods, finance and new media sectors across Europe, the USand Africa.  Previously, Tracey has held senior roles at the BBC, where she was Head of Corporate Planning, Booz ½Allen ½Hamilton, and Deloitte & Touche/ Braxton Associates.  She has also been an active advisor to start-ups, several of which have been launched successfully in the technology, publishing, wine and consulting fields.  Tracey is a Fulbright Scholar and holds an MBA from The Wharton School where she was distinguished as a Palmer Scholar.