Book review The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs - Essay Example

Book Review: The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs I.D. of the Book Review: The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs Thesis The central lesson of Montgomery’s (2012) book The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs is that strategic management not only involves planning and management skills but also calls for leadership qualities. Essentially, the author focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of strategic management and helps the reader to adjudge that whether he or she can be regarded as a strategist or not.

Contextually, Montgomery delivers a number of key lessons that can help the reader to become a capable strategist. The book has a corporate tone throughout its content, but frequent academic references to business literature and real world case studies have considerably enriched it. Central Pillars First and most outstandingly, Montgomery understands that strategic planning and activities do not depend on some kind of managerial stereotype or theoretical cliche. Therefore, she continuously attempts to utilize her experience and stress the importance of situational analysis in almost every strategic context.

Although the author has not dedicated any specific portion of her book for understanding situational analysis as a whole, she consistently emphasizes the importance of understanding the business environment and related external factors with respect to the organization. This approach is clearly reflected in her selection of management tools. For example, Montgomery discusses the functions and importance of using the “SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) model” in the context of strategic decision making (refer to Montgomery 2012, pp. 2, 152). Montgomery’s understanding of the concept of strategy is further elaborated in a wider context with respect to business organization, business environment, and innovation management.

Hence she suggests that the manager must utilize of the methodology of “strategy wheel” (Montgomery 2012, pp. 91-93) so that contextual multiplicity of different business criteria and conditions can be better comprehended. Secondly, the author elaborates how important it is to have special skills in the realm of strategic management. These are primarily the planning skills, but a good strategist must have several interpersonal skills as well. In the realm of organizational behavior and strategic management, Montgomery consistently draws attention toward the fact that a strategist must make decisions in the context of his/her organization and colleagues.

Hence, the author writes, “You need to connect with people throughout the business so that you can both inspire them and learn from them.” (Montgomery 2012, p. 141) The author has utilized several case examples in her book. The case examples help the reader to harness a firm grip on the two learning outcomes discussed insofar. The author uses the example of Gucci to show that how a strategic plan can serve well to establish an innovative approach to do business in the face of numerous capable contenders.

The case study of IKEA shows that how technology integration can play a key role to tackle change management and handle the challenges of globalization. However, the central idea and approach of this book is largely incomplete without the third and most important learning outcome. The author has dedicated a portion of the opening chapter in her book for discussing this topic. This topic is all about the idea that “Leadership and strategy are inseparable” (Montgomery 2012, p. 12). Of course, leadership is a very broad subject matter of discussion.

However, Montgomery’s stance on the inseparability of leadership qualities and strategic management skills is not an overstatement or irrelevant point. Indeed, the author helps a novice manager to understand that leadership qualities are not mere tools of fulfilling ambitious plans and enterprises. Montgomery puts it straight forward before the reader that setting proper strategies is an imperative. And that is not quite possible without leadership qualities. Conversely, one can learn from this approach that proper strategic thinking and planning is one of the essentials of leadership development.

In the language of economics, theory of choices is generally applied to consumer studies; and the same technique can be utilized to elucidate the basic concepts of strategic management as well. Therefore, it is important to note that “purpose, like strategy, is about choice” (Montgomery 2012, p. 50). And in this way, the author acquaints the reader with the interdisciplinary nature of the very subject of strategic management. Discussion The main quality of this book is that it has cast a powerful focus on the fact that strategic management is an interdisciplinary or multifaceted subject.

For the aspiring managers of future, the massage of this book is very clear. The author states: “My intent is not to coach these executives in strategy in the way they might learn finance or marketing. As business leaders, they aren’t going to be functional specialists. But they do need to be strategists.” (Montgomery 2012. p. 12) However, the organization of the content appears to be a major drawback of this book. Although Montgomery is highly successful in conveying her ideas most usefully, she has not used any dedicated empirical study to prove her point.

Particularly with respect to the importance and utility of primary research, the author appears to be very indifferent. She has used experiential learning and case studies instead of primary research and statistics. Therefore, the book does not contain dedicated chapters on methodology and research limitations. Yet, the book is extremely useful for a future manager because it elaborates on different contemporary management tools and techniques. It also helps the reader to carry out self evaluation and learn about key strategic functions intricately.

Reference Montgomery, C.A. (2012). The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs. New York: Harper Collins