Book Review - Good Strategy Bad Strategy
The more I learn about UX the more I realise I need to understand more about business too.
I have worked for enough different business's to know the basics of how UX can work with the business to not just make a great product for their users but help the business to succeed too. But I also know there is more to business than money in and money out.
One of the things I am interested in is strategy. It seems like an important part of a successful business but I did not really understand what it was. So when I came across Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy Bad Strategy, I thought it might help.
The book is split into three parts, the first looking at what strategy is, the second looking at how other companies have created, or not, their own strategies, and the third looks at how to change your own thinking to ‘think like a strategist’.
What I really liked about this book was that he starts by explaining not just what good strategy is but what bad strategy looks like too. This helped me to understand much more about strategy than just being told what good looks like.
It seems that a good strategy is in answer to a problem of some sort and that most people mistake goals for strategy.
Of course there is more to the book than just that!
The first part of the book is a must read and will really help with your understanding of what strategy is and is not. However while the rest of the book is interesting it is really just case studies of American firms who have either had good strategy or made fatal mistakes with theirs.
If you want to know more about strategy then this is a good read but if you do not already have a good business grounding expect to feel lost in places.