Leaders Read#120
- Lars Christensen
- 18 hours ago
- 2 min read
👋 Hello everyone,
Andy Grove said, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.”
Here are a few resources you might have missed:
📚 Book Summary:
This week's book is "The Strategist's Handbook" by Timothy Galpin.
This is one of the most practical strategy books I’ve read. It provides a step-by-step process, with templates included in the appendix. Galpin also outlines what should show up consistently in implementation meetings and what it takes to build a communication plan that holds as execution gets messy.
One of my favorite takeaways from the book is this:
"Put as much focus on strategic transformation management as on strategy formulation. Many organizations devote significant resources to internal and external strategic analysis during strategy formulation, while strategy execution and strategic transformation management are an afterthought. Successful strategy implementation and transformation management require management focus and resource allocation not just during strategy formulation but also throughout execution."
✅ Actionable advice:
How do you ensure your strategy survives contact with reality? In Harvard Business School’s Strategy Execution class, Professor Robert Simons uses a simple but effective lesson: a Boeing 747 has hundreds of dials, switches, and indicators, yet a pilot relies on only five to seven to keep the plane in the air. The rest matter only when something starts to go wrong. Strategy execution works the same way. Identify the five to seven “execution dials” that truly keep your strategy flying. Then ask yourself a harder question: if this strategy were a total failure twelve months from now, which five to seven things would you wish you had kept your eye on? Those are your execution dials—review them monthly, as they deserve as much attention as the strategy itself.
I hope you have a great week!