new book on strategic analysis

["geoff coyle"]

Dear SD colleagues and friends,

I am pleased to tell you that my new book, Practical Strategy: Structured Tools and Techniques, was published by Pearson Education in November 2003. Unlike my previous work, this book has very little about SD so why should you be interested?

The reason is that the book aims to complement our standard SD approach by providing a set of simple, non-mathematical, techniques to support the development of the concepts for an action plan for a strategic problem. SD analysis of the dynamic consequences of those concepts might then be very illuminating. For example, one of the case studies deals with the very strategic problem that the rivers of the Murray/Darling Basin in Australia may effectively be ecologically dead within the next twenty years. How that might be averted is the question, and an action plan emerges at the end of the case study; simulation of that plan should be a important next step. In short, I believe that the techniques in the book might provide a very powerful front-end for SD analysis of strategic issues.

In outline, Practical Strategy covers: diagrammatic techniques for making sense of the problem context; an effective method of generating futures scenarios; deriving actions appropriate to those scenarios; designing an organisation that could implement those actions; evaluating the organisational change from the points of view of stakeholders and other interested parties; assessing the resource requirements; and, finally, doing a cross check on the analysis from a balance-of-forces viewpoint and developing the basis for a time-phased action plan. As the reader goes through the chapters a case-study of strategy for a major retail chain unfolds to illustrate the techniques.

Additional material deals with: stimulating innovation; analysing issue history; tools for rapid analysis; and handling wish lists. There are two major cases to complement the numerous examples in the earlier chapters, and there is advice on Practical Strategy in action. An instructor manual and additional case material is on the books companion website. A software package to support the techniques is being developed and should be available early in 2004. See www.actifeld.com.

An important point is that the methodology does not depend on the concept of competitive advantage so it can be applied to strategic issues in any domain. For instance, recent MBA projects have dealt with rescuing Venice from the sea, fire protection in the Amazon rain forest, and policy on low-flying training by the Royal Air Force. There have, of course, also been many straightforward business projects.

The book is the set text for an elective module entitled Techniques for Strategic Consultancy that I teach to the MBAs at the Bath School of Management and, occasionally, to defence scientists and serving officers at the Australian Defence Force Academy. At Bath, the course is so popular that it runs four times a year.

The book is suitable for MBA electives but it also designed for degrees in systems modelling, decision sciences and, indeed, for any area in which strategic analysis and planning are important. This is a change in my work, as it has nothing to do with system dynamics.

More information about the book is available at http://www.pearsoned.co.uk/Bookshop/det ... 0000031651. Until the end of March, a 15% discount on this, and other key management texts, can be obtained by accessing www.pearson-books.com/voucher and then entering the discount code of ZE001A. This will display details of all the discounted books.

I hope that youll find this of interest and Id very much appreciate it if youd forward this email to any of your contacts to whom it might be relevant, such as academics teaching MBA or MSc (Decision Sciences) and practitioners in business or consultancy. I apologise in advance if you get it more than once from contacts of contacts. It will be interesting to see how far the network spreads.

Regards,

Geoff Coyle
From: "geoff coyle" <geoff.coyle@btinternet.com>


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