Strategy information

There is an absolute truckload of books, journal articles and magazines dedicated to strategic management and strategic planning.  This is quite interesting as it seems most of the great minds in the area recognise that we don't actually know that much about strategy let alone how to do it well.

Why so much stuff, because it sells.......

There seems to be an insatiable demand for literature on the subject and plenty of authors happy to meet this need.  Just stick "strategic planning" (in quotes) into the book section of Amazon and how many hits are there in the business and investing section?  I'll tell you because I have just done it a jaw dropping 19,013!!!!!!!!!

Out of curiosity lets look at some other notable areas:

  • strategy - 33,858
  • "strategic planning" - 15,140
  • "performance management" - 1,662
  • governance - 7,629
  • "project management" - 6,088
  • marketing - 427,950 (WTF?????????)
  • leadership - 25,316
  • Accounting 101,526
To be absolutely honest I'm not sure what that piece of quick and dirty research tells us, maybe that publishing a book on marketing is the way to get your toe in authoring business.  Also the more an area is subjective the more opportunity there is to peddle the 'right' answer.  Accounting being the exception but all business have to do accounting properly thanks mainly to the tax laws so that maybe related to compliance.

There are plenty of strategy books telling us the right way to do it to get the right answer yet there is no right answer, it just is not possible.
‘Strategic decisions involve analytic approaches that are different from those presented by other business functions—in particular, strategic decisions are not amenable to solution by algorithm, no matter how complex or sophisticated’[italics added]’ (Grant, 2008).




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