Strategic Planning

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

What if strategy could instead be clear, simple, bold, and even actually useful? That’s what No Bullsh*t Strategy is all about. It sweeps away all the garbled corporate nonsense and dry academic theorising to leave you with pure strategic sauce, which can be actioned right away. It’ll make you see your business in a totally new light, and effortlessly unlock insights you didn’t know you had in you. Even better, it makes strategy fun.

The critical leadership practices - the ones that will allow a leader to make the biggest impact over time - are well established. They're about how you create a vision and inspire others to follow it. In this comprehensive handbook, strategy and change experts Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville distill proven ideas and frameworks about leadership from Harvard Business Review, interviews with senior executives, and their own experience in the field - all to help rising leaders stand out and have a big impact.

There is no CEO task more significant than leading change in an organization whose old business model needs updating. Large-scale change involves rethinking how to engage customers, partners, and suppliers with new technology and hard decisions about how to reorganize internal operations—plus the challenges of executing the transformation. Too many things can go wrong, from natural organizational resistance and inertia, to lack of strategic focus, to execution problems. And yet, organizations today must be more dynamic than ever before.

A breakthrough solution is exposed when some unexpected events force Caroline and Paul, a married couple working for their family's retail business, to make a few small changes in the way things are done. A solution that propels the family's regional chain of stores into a very profitable, rapidly growing, international enterprise. If there is a hint of Jonah, from The Goal, reappearing in this novel, it is Henry, the soon-to-retire president and majority owner of the company who logically states that, "if you do not deal directly with the core problem, don't expect significant improvement."

In their eagerly awaited book, Kim and Spear bring to light a new theory of high-achieving organizations. They examine how companies solve the most important problems better, faster, and easier than their competitors by quickly and regularly closing the gap between aspirations and real-world success. This book teaches companies that are struggling to perform how to achieve the continual greatness seen in the best of the best.

Work with data like a pro using this guide that breaks down how to organize, apply, and most importantly, understand what you are analyzing in order to become a true data ninja.

You're probably aware that generative AI can output quality text and create stunning images in seconds. But smart managers are now using gen AI for high-level work—problem-solving, driving innovation, strategic thinking, and dozens of other applications. Managers who develop their generative AI capabilities will soon be leaping ahead of those who don't. Fortunately, you can start today and see immediate results. The HBR Guide to Generative AI for Managers is packed with practical tips, prompts, and case studies to accelerate and improve countless aspects of your work.

Think in Systems is a concise information book offering high-level, strategic problem-solving methods for personal and global issues. The book presents the main features of systems thinking in an understandable everyday manner, helping you to develop the skill top analysts and world leaders use.

In Strategic, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework—the Strategic Fitness System—containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organization's culture.

You don't have to be a 23-year-old dancer with no savings to end up with the excruciating debts young Iris is confronted with in this latest work by financial and legal advisor Tad Crawford. Every year, thousands of Americans of all ages and backgrounds overtax their bank accounts and credit cards and are left with the tricky task of pulling themselves out of their financial chaos. Rarely can they receive such high-quality financial and moral support as The Money Mentor provides.

Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can't agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe - and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics, and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew W. Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework.

When we think about the future, it can be difficult to feel that we have any control. We aren't confident that we can take actions and make decisions that help determine what happens next. We want to feel prepared, hopeful and equipped and to face the future with optimism. Or, better yet, change the future. But how do we map out our lives when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year? Jane McGonigal, a renowned future forecaster, reveals that 'unimaginable' events aren't unimaginable before they happen.

Clayton M. Christensen is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Michael E. Raynor is a director at Deloitte Research. Together, they outline an innovative plan that urges businesses to create disruption rather than fleeing from it. Named one of 2003's Best Business Books by Business Week, this book is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times best seller.

Every leader and team can use Building Strategic Organizations to deepen their understanding of essential strategy topics. You can also use these five tools to quickly develop a robust strategic plan that aligns your on-the-ground work with your strategy, priorities, and vision. Build the strategic capacity and employee engagement of your entire workforce by making sure they know why they come to work, what is most important, and what progress is being made.

Pattern Breakers had its roots in the time when Mike Maples, a seasoned venture capitalist, was stumped, unable to get a grip on why some businesses he funded—Twitter, Twitch, and Okta, for example—took off, while others, some deemed “most likely to succeed,” shut their doors despite doing everything right. Was it dumb luck that separated gold from dross?

7 Powers breaks fresh ground by constructing a comprehensive strategy toolset that is easy for you to learn, communicate, and quickly apply. Drawing on his decades of experience as a business strategy adviser, active equity investor and Stanford University teacher Hamilton Helmer develops from first principles a practical theory of strategy rooted in the notion of power, those conditions which create the potential for persistent differential returns. Using rich real-world examples, Helmer rigorously characterizes exactly what your business must achieve to create power.

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the global financial crisis to 9/11 to the Fukushima disaster, we often fail to foresee hugely significant events. In The Signal and the Noise, the New York Times' political forecaster and statistics guru Nate Silver explores the art of prediction, revealing how we can all build a better crystal ball.

Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external.