  | Book Details Title: Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy |
Book DescriptionReview Advance Praise for Fit to Compete:”Fit to Compete is a survival manual for every leader who has struggled to create real change in an organization. Michael Beer offers a powerful tool–the strategic fitness process–that enables leaders to successfully implement their strategies and, in the process, transform their organization’s culture and their own ability to lead.” — Teresa Amabile, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School; coauthor, The Progress Principle“Michael Beer has crafted a brilliantly simple process to help organizations honestly cut through the challenges of the day and advance their strategies in enlightened and impactful ways.” — Douglas R. Conant, founder, ConantLeadership; former President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company; and former Chairman, Avon Products“Many firms are stuck–strategically and organizationally–because no one will speak truth to power. In this hugely important book, Professor Michael Beer lays out how to structure a process to make these conversations happen and details the often-astounding results that flow from putting them in place.” — Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University“Before becoming CEO, I spent four months asking questions and listening to workers, middle-level managers, customers, and suppliers to try to learn the truth about the company. Few CEOs have this luxury. But Michael Beer’s strategic fitness process shows you how to find truth in a way that not only works but also builds trust and institutional knowledge. It would have been hugely valuable if I had the method and wisdom in this book at the time I took over as CEO.” — Richard Gochnauer, former President and CEO, United Stationers Read more About the Author Michael Beer is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He is a cofounder and Chairman of TruePoint Partners, an international consulting firm, and chairman of the board at the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of companies and leaders committed to creating economic and social value. He is the author of eleven books, including Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).You can find the author at: truepoint.com/who-we-are/our-people/michael-beer/ Read more Customers Review: Unless there is effective communication between and among those who comprise a workforce culture, their organization cannot institutionalize productive cooperation, much less high-impact collaboration. Hence the importance of what Michael Beer characterizes as “honest conversations.” That is, conversations that enable an organization “to realign itself rapidly with ever-changing competitive demands.”For example, as he explains, companies such as British Petroleum, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Nokia, and Toyota have grappled with huge strategic challenges because of their failure to reimagine their purpose, identity, strategy, business model, and structure. Transformation initiatives have missed the mark “not because the new strategy is flawed, but because the organizations can’t carry it out.” Their leaders failed to realize that, during the process of preparation and implementation, honest conversations “about their company’s capabilities are the key to a winning strategy.”These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Beer’s coverage:o Automatic positivity (1-10)o Zappos (23-26 and 62-65)o Customer-focused innovation (27-30)o Generational differences in the workplace (48-52)o Millennial employees (49-52)o Transformative power of honest conversations (57-82)o “Wow” customer experience (61-81)o Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company 66-67 and 69-75)o Cinematic approach to customer experience (83-86 and 86-97)o Customer experience 83-110)o Service recovery systems (117-121)o Vertical communication (134-136, 139-140, and 188-189)o Digital communication and technology (147-170)o Judgment calls (149 and 165-166)o Social sharing (171-181)The Japanese term kaezen refers to continuous improvement, a never-ending process rather than a destination. The same can be said for “strategic fitness,” a concept suggested by Charles Darwin’s views on adaptation. He was among the first to perceive the underlying problem clearly (i.e. equating Adam Smith’s concept of “the invisible hand” to competition. One of his central insights was that natural selection favors traits and behaviors primarily according to their effect on individual organisms, not larger groups. Sometimes individual and group interests coincide, he recognized, and in such cases we often get invisible hand-like results.Many organizations become hostage to what James O’Toole so apty characterizes as the “ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” I share Beer’s high regard for the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP). It involves honest conversations at all levels and in all areas between top management teams and employees who know why their organization is foundering. As he explains, SFP “is a safe, respectful, and powerful leadership platform that courageous leaders in many organizations have used to accelerate change.”Beer has much of value to say about silent killers: “Like cholesterol in the human body, they clog organizational arteries…these barriers create the the organizational friction that impedes realignment and sustained improvement within organizations organizational friction.”Here are six silent killers:o Unclear strategy, unclear values, and conflicting prioritieso Ineffective senior teamo Leadership style: top-down or laissez-faire (hands off)o Poor coordination across businesses, functions, or geographic regionso Inadequate leadership developmento Inadequate verbal communication: both upward and downwardHere’s another I’ve noticed: silos disguised as managersMichael Beer thoroughly examines “silent killers” in Chapter 4, explaining how a Strategic Fitness Process (SFP) can prevent or eliminate them. In my opinion, Fit to Compete is among the most important business books published in recent years. Bravo!
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3 reviews