Harvard Business Review - HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection (3 Books)

Every company needs a strategy, one that will position it to grow over the long term. But charting such a path forward can be challenging, especially if your industry is facing new entrants, frequent disruption, or increased regulation. Your strategy must account for where youre competing, the customers you are targeting, what you aim to offer, and what your people need to succeed. And it must be communicated in a way that ensures buy-in from stakeholdersespecially your employees. Otherwise, execution may fall flat.

Whether you are revising a strategy you already have or formulating your startups strategy for the first time, this guide will provide you with practical tips and advice to help you define a strategy that will give your company a competitive edge, test it to ensure it will work, communicate it to others and execute it, and adapt it as needed.

Youll learn to:

• Understand the basics of strategy, implementation, and execution
• Consider the predictability and malleability of your industry
• Organize a more productive strategy offsite
• Recognize who your stakeholders are, what their needs are, and what you want from them
• Consider where youll play and how to win in crafting your strategy
• Build purpose and creativity into your strategy
• Think in the long term, rather than in annualor quarterlycycles
• Identify the capabilities you need to ensure success
• Test your strategy before implementing it
• Communicate your strategy to your team by defining what you wont be doing
• Evaluate and adjust your strategy over time

Shape the future to your advantage.

They involve different activities, tools, and people.

BY KEN FAVARO

And why theyre wrong.

BY STEPHEN BUNGAY

Distinguish between objectives, strategies, and actions.

BY GRAHAM KENNY

Consider the circumstances in which youre operating.

BY MARTIN REEVES, CLAIRE LOVE, AND PHILIPP TILLMANNS

Two factors can help you define your process.

BY KIMBERLY TETI, MU-JEUNG YANG, NICHOLAS BLOOM, JAN W. RIVKIN, AND RAFFAELLA SADUN

Understand your objectivesbefore you get in the room.

BY MELISSA RAFFONI

Recognize what you want from them and what they want from you.

BY GRAHAM KENNY

Four approaches to building a breakthrough strategy.

BY ADAM BRANDENBURGER

Where will we play? How will we win?

BY ROGER L. MARTIN

Maintain your competitive edge.

BY CARSTEN LUND PEDERSEN AND THOMAS RITTER

Stop fearing the long term.

BY AMY WEBB

By understanding how they operate, youll be better positioned to compete.

BY JULIAN BIRKINSHAW

Reshape your value proposition.

BY THOMAS W. MALNIGHT, IVY BUCHE, AND CHARLES DHANARAJ

Assign a team to poke holes in it.

BY RICK LYNCH AND JAY GALEOTA

And the remedies to get out of them.

BY ROGER L. MARTIN

Build skill development into your plan.

BY RON ASHKENAS AND LOGAN CHANDLER

At both the team and the enterprise levels.

BY JONATHAN TREVOR AND BARRY VARCOE