Fred Pelard - How to be Strategic

A must-read for everyone who ever deals with complex, important challenges. There are many take-away gems here that will help you push through the knotty centre of hard-to-resolve problems. Highly recommended! Richard Rumelt, Harry and Elsa Kunin Emeritus Professor of Business & Society at Anderson School of Management, UCLA and author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

Being strategic is best accomplished when you develop the right thinking skills, mindset and toolset to help you work smarter. Fred has distilled an entire careers worth of expertize and experience into a comprehensive, concise and practical guide that will enable anyone, in any situation, to develop their strategic thinking Tiffani Bova, Chief Growth Evangelist, Salesforce and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Growth IQ

Bold new thinking and innovation is hard. This book gives a wonderful and inspirational look into wide-ranging frameworks and theories to spark new thinking and strategy Tom Goodwin, author of Digital Darwinism and Head of Futures and Insight at Publicis Groupe

Practical and comprehensive, How to Be Strategic reveals how to build your strategic mindset and gives you the most powerful tools Roeland Assenberg, Director, Strategy and Banking, Monitor Deloitte Netherlands

Based in London and working globally, Fred Pelard is a strategy trainer, consultant, facilitator and coach. He specializes in helping teams and organizations solve strategic problems. A French rocket-scientist by training, hes been lecturing on strategic thinking and complex problem solving to the CEOs and management teams of major corporations and consulting firms around the world for the best part of 20 years. He makes smart people smarter.

Fred started his career in management consulting with Deloitte, completed his MBA at INSEAD, and has worked as a strategist ever since. First with Kalchas (a medium-sized Bain and McKinsey spin-off, eventually sold to CSC) and then with Instigate Group, where he works with some of the leading organizations in media, retail, consumer goods, financial services, industry and consulting. He currently divides his time between three areas of equal interest and excitement:

designing and delivering strategic thinking sessions (training, talks, etc.)

facilitating strategic away-days for boards and management teams

conducting high-impact strategy projects and ideas generation challenges.

Typical interventions include 90-minute talks for up to 500 people, two-day senior-level workshops with up to 50 executives, and five-day intensive sprint-venturing innovation sessions with participants from across the company. Footprint is truly global, from San Francisco to Shanghai, Stockholm to South Africa, and all points of the compass in between (live, and via Zoom, Webex, etc.)

Selected repeat clients include Allianz, Barclays, BBC, Betfair, Booz Allen, Channel 4, Deloitte, Expedia, HSBC, IKEA, John Lewis, Johnson & Johnson, London Business School, OC&C Strategy, Sainsburys, Thomson Reuters.

Check out Freds website and YouTube channel to get a sense of what he teaches.

www.fredpelard.com

www.youtube.com/fredpelard

PENGUIN BOOKS

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2020

Copyright Fred Pelard, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-98813-8

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/penguin-connect/

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

To the quest

Hard work, talent, contacts, luck. These are important for success in life. Whatever your chosen pursuit. In business, one also needs to add one more ingredient: the ability to be strategic. Smart work, if you will.

Being strategic is a skill, and it can be learned. Ive been teaching it for the last 20 years, to over 10,000 executives across 60+ organizations. Superior strategic thinking skills boil down to two things: a specific mindset (to tackle the uncertainty of the future, where all strategic issues reside) and a wide toolset (to craft credible solutions out of very little actual data). This book contains five parts. The first and last parts focus on the mindset, and the middle three on the toolset.

• How to Solve Complex Problems (Think)
• How to Generate Great Ideas Quickly (Up)
• How to Eliminate Options in No Time (Down)
• How to Get the Best Solution Approved (Push)
• How to Keep Improving as a Strategic Thinker (Again)

Think introduces the markedly different ways in which different people deal with Complexity. This part explains the expert, analytical, creative and strategic approaches to complex problem solving, and how each approach relies on a different mix of data, structure and brilliance. Think concludes with the Rollercoaster of Strategic Thinking as the ultimate mental model for working smarter, not harder, and Up-Down-Push as the practical way to achieve that.

Up focuses on three structured techniques for generating great ideas quickly. Like a camel in the desert, each technique takes you quite far on very little water (aka data). Asking, respectively: What would need to be true to achieve the success we seek?, How well are we currently meeting customers needs and expectations? and, What more successful versions of our business lie on the edge of our consciousness? Up takes you quickly to a place of Clarity on any strategic issue.

Down brings to bear three analytical techniques for eliminating many options in no time. Checking, respectively, that: an idea is better than all the other ideas you can think of in the future; it can be proven to work as a prototype in the present; and available past data broadly agrees with the conclusions of present and future testing. Down takes you methodically to a place of Certainty over time on any strategic issue.

Push combines three packaging techniques for getting your preferred solution approved. These techniques include guidelines for, respectively: verbalizing your answer in memorable, plain English; putting dollar estimates around it; and crafting a compelling story. Push takes your stakeholders (boss, clients, colleagues, etc.) to a point of Conviction, where they agree to your strategic recommendation.

Again offers lifetime tips to help you keep improving as a strategic thinker. Slogans such as Vote First, Then Debate, Small Teams Go Faster, The Third Solution Is Often the Best are explained further, instilling a highly practical roadmap to navigate the next 10 years of your career. Again takes you to a place of deep personal Confidence in your ability to welcome any future strategic challenge with a smile, and to solve it.