Agile Strategy: How To Create A Strategy Ready For Anything, 1st edition

Published by FT Publishing International (June 18, 2019) © 2019

  • Ralph Fernando
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Agile Strategy is a practical guide for managers responsible for setting the strategic direction of their organisations in increasingly dynamic markets. Through its frameworks, tools and real-world examples, it explains how to transform business performance through greater organisational agility.  
  • LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
  • STRATEGY
  • BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

Why do we need a new book on strategy?
The pace of change is increasing, and strategic management is not keeping up. More than one in four (28%) strategic initiatives fail to meet their original goals and business intent[1], with insufficient agility identified as one of the top three barriers to successful strategy implementation[2].The square peg of traditional strategy — vision, mission and blue-sky exercises; the separation of strategy from “implementation” — no longer fits the round hole of increasingly dynamic markets. It is time for a new approach.
How is Agile Strategy different?Agile Strategy distinguishes itself from other strategy and agile books currently available in that it is:

  • Designed for large organisations: Much of the writing on agile techniques addresses start-ups or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which operate under very different constraints and freedoms. Agile Strategy is written for large organisations who want to be more agile.
  • Commercially-led: The approach is not a lightly airbrushed business rewrite of agile software development practices, but rather a fundamental rethinking of commercial and operational business practices.
  • Practical: It is anchored in innovative and robust concepts but designed as a practical “how-to” guide: a book for practitioners, written by a practitioner.
  • Results-focused: Whilst addressing a broad range of organisational topics, the book is grounded in the definition and delivery of measurable business benefits.

Why should I read it?
Agile Strategy offers four key benefits to its readers: 

  1. A clear framework ("RADAR")
  2. A single, easy-to-grasp guiding principle: The Horizon
  3. Measurable benefits
  4. A practical approach

I hope you not only enjoy reading about this innovative new approach, but also go on to realise the full potential of your organisation by implementing it. Good luck!
Ralph Fernando[1] Project Management Institute (2017) Pulse of the Profession
[2] The Economist Intelligence Unit (2017) Closing the Gap: Designing and Delivering a Strategy that Works"

  • PART ONE Getting started
  • 1 What you need to design an agile strategy
  • 2 Get some perspective! How to ask the right questions
  • PART TWO Research and analysis
  • 3 How to gain insight in a VUCA world
  • 4 VUCAnomics – learn where and why you make money
  • 5 Use your intelligence – how to track market and organisational performance
  • PART THREE Design and action
  • 6 How to foster agility in your organisation
  • 7 How to develop strategic intent and operational flexibility
  • 8 How to execute agile strategies
  • PART FOUR Results
  • 9 How to measure success
  • 10 How to hurdle the barriers to success
  • Epilogue: How to continue the conversation
  • Index

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