Put your strategy into action. Even the best competitive strategies mean nothing if they aren't executed well. Yet many organizations struggle when they move from defining a strategy to actually applying it. Somehow, all the careful planning falls apart, initiatives fail, and leaders are left wondering how to pick up the pieces. The HBR Guide to Executing Your Strategy is here to help. This book offers leaders and managers tips and advice for sharing the strategy with your employees, making the shift toward the right objectives, and seeing your strategy come to fruition. You'll learn how to: Understand the "why" behind your strategy Identify the capabilities you have—and the ones you need Communicate objectives and priorities effectively to your team Prioritize strategic projects and let go of outdated ones Encourage cross-silo collaboration toward organizational goals Adjust course when necessary Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Set your company up for long-term success. Every company needs a strategy. A focused strategy aligns decision making throughout the organization and helps establish a competitive edge in the marketplace. But with so many options to consider, how do you define a unique strategy that will ensure growth? Whether you're starting a business from scratch or leading an existing company facing new threats, this book offers the direction you need. The HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy provides practical tips and advice that break down the process of crafting strategy so you can identify the areas your company should build on to help it thrive long into the future. You'll learn to: Understand what strategy is—and what it isn't Define where you'll play and how you'll win Conduct more-effective strategic discussions with your team Test your strategy before you implement it Communicate your strategy to key stakeholders Ensure your strategy is flexible and adaptable Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

If you aren't working with a strategy, you're wasting your time. Strategy isn't just a set of plans handed down from the C-suite. To grow as a leader, you need to understand your company's strategy and align your thinking, projects, and team with organizational goals and vision. Master these abilities with the HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection. This three-book set, which includes the HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically, the HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives, and the HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy, will help you change the way you think about your work, manage your most important priorities, and craft a strategy for long-term growth. You'll learn how to: Understand what strategy is--and what it isn't Define a clear strategy, whether you're in a start-up or in an established business Manage a portfolio of strategic projects Embed strategic thinking into your daily tasks and decision making Align your team around key objectives Let go of work that doesn’t add value Communicate strategy throughout your organization Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.

Every day on the job, you face common challenges. And you need immediate solutions to those challenges. The Pocket Mentor Series can help. Each book in the series is packed with handy tools, self-tests, and real-life examples to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and hone critical skills. Whether you're at your desk, in a meeting, or on the road, these portable, concise guides enable you to tackle the daily demands of your work with speed, savvy, and effectiveness. The latest volume in the series: Executing Strategy That strategy you've defined for your group is brilliant--promising better market share, higher profits, or some other impressive business result. But your strategy won't deliver the expected outcomes if you and your group don't execute it that is, if you don't put it into action by implementing the right strategic initiatives. This volume helps you master the challenging art of strategy execution. You'll learn how to: -Craft action plans for the strategic initiatives required to meet your goals -Keep your action plans on course despite the inevitable setbacks and surprises -Cultivate employees' sense of ownership and accountability for your plans -Create a group culture in which everyone views strategy as their job

You think you have a winning strategy. But do you? Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you aim to be big or fast? Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win—or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether? In a business environment that is changing faster and becoming more uncertain and complex almost by the day, it’s never been more important—or more difficult—to choose the right approach to strategy. In this book, The Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha offer a proven method to determine the strategy approach that is best for your company. They start by helping you assess your business environment—how unpredictable it is, how much power you have to change it, and how harsh it is—a critical component of getting strategy right. They show how existing strategy approaches sort into five categories—Be Big, Be Fast, Be First, Be the Orchestrator, or simply Be Viable—depending on the extent of predictability, malleability, and harshness. In-depth explanations of each of these approaches will provide critical insight to help you match your approach to strategy to your environment, determine when and how to execute each one, and avoid a potentially fatal mismatch. Addressing your most pressing strategic challenges, you’ll be able to answer questions such as: • What replaces planning when the annual cycle is obsolete? • When can we—and when should we—shape the game to our advantage? • How do we simultaneously implement different strategic approaches for different business units? • How do we manage the inherent contradictions in formulating and executing different strategies across multiple businesses and geographies? Until now, no book brings it all together and offers a practical tool for understanding which strategic approach to apply. Get started today.

Bring strategy into your daily work. It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work--and the work of your team--aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list. You'll learn how to: Understand your organization's strategy Align your team around key objectives Focus on the priorities that matter most Spot trends in your company and in your industry Consider future outcomes when making decisions Manage trade-offs Embrace a leadership mindset