Whether you’re on a job interview or wooing clients for your solo business. But to do that well, you first need to come to grips with the parts of your job history that you’re least interested in talking about. And that means working your way through these three phases:HideApologizeAccept

Selling your experience is a vital skill

For years I was embarrassed that I worked at Walmart. At parties or industry events, I answered the question the same way many of my coworkers did.Them: So where do you work, anyway?Me: Retail.Them: Cool.Eventually, I started to realize that masking is a form of self-judgment. I wasn’t confident about working at Walmart. I was afraid to mention the company because I was afraid of people’s perceptions: Main-Street-obliterating, fair-wage–damaging, soul-destroying behemoth corrupting society.

PHASE 1: HIDING

It went something like this:Them: So where do you work, anyway?Me: (grimacing) Uh . . . Walmart?Them: Oh, uh, okay, haha . . . yeah, I heard of the place! Haha, uh . . .By acting awkwardly, I made things awkward for others. By apologizing for myself, I forced others to apologize, too. Eventually, I realized that apologizing was a form of self-judgment in the way that hiding my job history was.

PHASE 2: APOLOGIZING

Them: So where do you work, anyway?Me: Walmart.Them: Cool.Sounds silly, but it really was that simple. Gone was the tendency to hide the truth from others that reflected my desire to hide it from myself. Gone was the tentativeness and questioning, telling others that I was questioning part of myself–and inviting them to question me, too.

PHASE 3: ACCEPTANCE

Find what’s hidden, stop apologizing, and accept yourself.

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

How to Embrace the Most Embarrassing Parts of Your Resume — Neil Pasricha

“So many of my clients are guilty of sitting down at their desks and having their [personal] phone right next to them,” said time management coach Anna Dearmon Kornick. “And if a webpage is taking too long to load or they have a few seconds where they are just still, they have this compulsion to just reach for their phone and go into this almost zombie autopilot mode where you tap-tap over to those apps you use the most. Instead of constantly losing time to social media rabbit holes, Kornick recommends you schedule “scroll time” in your day..

1. You constantly check your personal phone when there is a lull.

“We have this mindless habit of doing whatever it is that pops up in our head, because we don’t want to forget it,” Kornick said. “We tell ourselves it will just take a second, but then one thing leads to the next.”Kornick recommends creating a “shiny thing list” of off-work tasks to keep your chunks of work time uninterrupted and to figure out what you can delegate, defer or handle later.

2. You do unrelated tasks that will “only take a second.”

Adam Stiles, who invented browser tabs, previously explained to HuffPost that some of us cannot handle the freedom of unlimited tabs: “The invention gives people freedom. Perhaps it gives some people too much freedom.”If you find 20 open tabs stressful and distracting, use tab organizers like One Tab that turn all of your tabs into a list, or background managers like Tab Auto Close and Tab Wrangler that automatically close tabs after too much inactivity.

3. You open too many tabs on your browser.

“Similar to text messaging, an impulse develops to view incoming updates, and that repeated habit can interrupt focus big-time, as well as cause scatterbrain,” said life coach Shanita Liu.To break this habit, “set boundaries with teammates so that they know when your focus cannot be interrupted,” Liu said. If your company uses Slack, try manually updating your status to “away.” If your co-workers have access to your calendar, block your calendar with “non-interruption” times, so they know you should not be contacted, Liu suggested.

4. You impulsively check Slack and other work chat platforms.

To be a better problem-finder, don’t look for solutions right away. First, ask yourself if solving it is your role, and welcome questions. Menon said an exercise she gives students involves asking them to brainstorm only questions about a problem, so they are “engaged in the process of finding the problem” instead of jumping to find answers.

5. You start solving problems right away, before determining if they’re actually your problems to solve.

Norma Reyes, a career coach who works with women to help them gain clarity on their next career moves, said one mindless habit she sees professionals repeat is when they believe they have mastered a part of their jobs and get stuck in a “fixed mindset” in which they become more resistant to change at work and use up their time and energy to fight it.“This can be maybe just nitpicking at the changes, maybe even rallying people around the changes, versus seeing that the change is necessary for a different reason,” Reyes said.

6. You assume you are right.

7. You schedule unnecessary meetings.Forty-seven percent of workers surveyed by Salary.com in 2012 said “too many meetings” was their top workplace distraction. If you have a voice in how your company’s meetings are handled, question why you are having them and solicit regular feedback from attendees about length and usefulness.As meetings researcher Steven G. Rogelberg previously told HuffPost, “One of the things that I advocate is that a leader can think about their agenda not necessarily as topics, but as questions to be answered.”

7. You schedule unnecessary meetings.

7 Mindless Habits That Are Making You Unproductive At Work

You may be aware that your organisation needs change. You may even know what the change should be: a new strategy or reorganisation or a new IT system. However, change comes too slowly, or the implementation has come late and with much frustration. The problem is complacency. We underestimate its power and prevalence. It is even in places where people would deny it. They continue with the past norm and think they know what to do. But in a fast-changing world, complacency can cause disaster.

Producing large-scale change

Managers often think they have found the solution when they see lots of energetic activity, where people run from meeting to meeting, preparing presentations, and an endless list of activities. This false sense of urgency is not driven by a determination to win but by pressures that create anxiety and anger. It can drain people of energy.

The false solution

A real solution does not involve running from meeting to meeting or creating a huge list of trivial activities. True urgency focuses on critical issues driven by a deep determination to win. There are four tactics we can use to counter complacency and instil a culture with a true sense of urgency. <ol><li>Make external problems and opportunities visible</li><li>Behave with urgency every day</li><li>Find opportunities in crisis</li><li>Deal with the No-Nos</li></ol>

The real solution is a true sense of urgency


When organisations don't attend to external threats, they will eventually become complacent and blind towards them. As a first step, leaders should be proactive in collecting information.<ul><li>Lower-level personnel are often the closest to the customer and will know what is happening on the outside, so listen closely when you interact with them.</li><li>Collect data. Evaluate the competition. Talk to the customers.</li><li>Bring outsiders in. Invite consultants, vendors, and customers to share their knowledge of your organisation. </li></ul>

Make external threats and opportunities visible

Collecting information is insufficient to spark a sense of urgency. Therefore, it is vital to share the information. <ul><li>Tell a compelling story. Dry facts may appeal to the mind but are not enough to appeal to the hearts of the people in your organisation. A good way to spread outside information is with the power of video and storytelling.</li><li>The visuals your employees see can produce a certain message. Ensure you create a message of outside awareness and urgency. Show your position within the market, what your competition is doing, and the progress of your ongoing projects.</li></ul>

Share your information

Acting with urgency has to do with clarity and purpose. Be specific with everything you do.  Create an action that is alert, externally oriented, and aimed at winning. Make some progress every day, and continually purge low value-added activities. Cancel projects that have become distractions.

Behave with urgency every day

Great leaders know that a crisis has the opportunity to create an atmosphere of a true sense of urgency. With good leadership, a crisis can be used to wake people up out of their passive routines. Make the crisis visible, specific, and big enough to require creative action. Carefully watch how your organisation reacts, what plans are being developed and how quickly they are implemented.

Find opportunities in crisis

The NoNo is someone who is armed with reasons why the current situation is fine, why the problems others see don't exist, and why you need more data before moving into action. A NoNo is not the same as a sceptic. A sceptic is essential to show out poor ideas but can become a huge supporter if convinced that they are wrong. Mistakes when dealing with NoNos: <ul><li>Don't attempt to co-opt them, as it is impossible to convert a NoNo.</li><li>Don't ignore a NoNo. They may organize and active resistance against your initiative.</li></ul> How to deal with NoNos:<ul><li>Distract them</li><li>Eliminate them</li><li>Call them out on their behaviour.</li></ul>

Deal with the No-Nos

John Kotter shows in his book what is missing in nearly all organisations today: a sense or urgency - that attitude that leads people to use opportunities and avoid pitfalls - they purge low-priority activities and move faster and smarter in a rapidly evolving economy.

In his international bestseller "Leading Change," Kotter provided an action plan for implementing successful transformations. Now, he shines the spotlight on the crucial first step in his framework: creating a sense of urgency by getting people to actually see and feel the need for change.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

books

Books

Most organizational change initiatives fail spectacularly (at worst) or deliver lukewarm results (at best). In his international bestseller Leading Change, John Kotter revealed why change is so hard, and provided an actionable, eight-step process for implementing successful transformations. The book became the change bible for managers worldwide. Now, in A Sense of Urgency, Kotter shines the spotlight on the crucial first step in his framework: creating a sense of urgency by getting people to actually see and feel the need for change. Why focus on urgency? Without it, any change effort is doomed. Kotter reveals the insidious nature of complacency in all its forms and guises. In this exciting new book, Kotter explains: · How to go beyond "the business case" for change to overcome the fear and anger that can suppress urgency · Ways to ensure that your actions and behaviors -- not just your words -- communicate the need for change · How to keep fanning the flames of urgency even after your transformation effort has scored some early successes Written in Kotter's signature no-nonsense style, this concise and authoritative guide helps you set the stage for leading a successful transformation in your company.

John P. Kotter

A Sense of Urgency

The holiday season can be the loneliest and most stressful time of the year for some people. When combined with workplace stress, the festive season can add stress.  Just before the holiday season, employees are dealing with shortened deadlines, expectations for the end of the fiscal year, and coping with stressed-out customers. Studies also show that productivity drops by 10-20% as workers lack motivation and feel exhausted.

Added stress during the holiday season

<ul><li>Reach out. Use a survey to determine how your team wants to celebrate the holidays at work. </li><li>Be inclusive. The workplace becomes more enjoyable when team members recognize how people from different cultures celebrate holidays.</li><li>Protect personal time. Try to offer an extra day off leading up to the holidays for employees to attend to personal needs.</li><li>Rebalance workloads. Work and home pressure converge at this time of year. Review the workload and see if some project deadlines can move to the new year.</li><li>Give time instead of gifts.</li></ul>

Managers can help combat stress

Most holiday-related stressors are self-imposed and can be avoided.<ul><li>Financial stress can be lessened by buying less.</li><li>Overcommitting can be avoided by saying no.</li><li>Multitasking can be managed by prioritising.</li><li>Loneliness can be prevented by reaching out. Start today by asking someone how they're doing. Listen with kindness and empathy and offer help if needed.</li></ul>

Reduce individual holiday stress

Here’s how to keep everyone’s spirits and productivity up.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Holidays Can Be Stressful. They Don’t Have to Stress Out Your Team.

<ul>
<li>Having a culture that can absorb change is essential in leadership.</li>
<li>People need to trust who is leading the change to help understand the reason for it and trust that they will be successful.</li>
<li>For change to be successful, top-down communication and bottom-up feedback are also essential.</li>
</ul>

Leading With Change

<ul><li>Culture is an evolving creature, and the aspects of culture to look for are:</li><li>No change saturation (there isn’t too much already occurring)</li><li>People feel empowered. That is, people can either adopt the change when they want, they are involved from the onset, and/or they can voice their concerns freely.</li><li>You are in luck if you have an <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/creativity">innovation</a> culture, a fast-paced culture, or a culture that is excited by change.</li></ul> If you don’t have these, consider what alternatives or postponements you can do to allow for a better environment for your change.

Have a Culture That Can Absorb the Change

People need to trust who is leading the change to help understand the reason for change and trust that they will be successful. The following people are needed:<ul><li>Senior leaders who support change</li><li>An actual change team with training in change management</li><li>Someone managing the project</li><li>Someone managing the communications</li><li>Specialists who know the changing process (IT/finance) or people (HR)</li><li>Early adopters or advocates from the operations/business</li></ul>An effective change leader does not need to be the top leader in the hierarchy. It needs to be someone who can influence, and people listen to.

Key People in Key Roles

For change to be successful, it needs to be tailored to the individual by building out a “what’s in it for me” approach:<ul><li>Identify different types of stakeholders based on how the change impacts them.</li><li>Determine unique resistance for each stakeholder group and an appropriate mitigation plan for each resistance point.</li><li>Develop a communications plan per stakeholder group (medium, frequency, messenger).</li><li>Create a training plan per each stakeholder group (content, medium, instructor).</li></ul>The change team themselves may be a group, as are senior leaders, people leaders, and HR.

Customized Approach

It is essential that communication happens in two ways. That is, there is top-down communication but also bottom-up feedback. To make this happen:<ul><li>Default communication to live discussion (e.g. face-to-face)</li><li>Communicate frequently and consistently</li><li>Ensure you talk to the quiet people</li><li>Utilize existing structures/meetings to reduce adding additional work/change</li><li>Be positive but realistic</li><li>Place messages in the larger context, but tailor them to the individual</li><li>Stay aligned with other leaders/departments/functions</li></ul>

Over-Communicate

Leaders should consider these four things when implementing a change.

Leading with a Change Checklist

Values drive corporate performance. My research concludes that a specific set of values drives sustained success. As I wrote in Value Leadership, these values are embodied in seven principles such as fulfilling your commitments, valuing human relationships, fostering teamwork, winning through multiple means and fighting complacency.
The Drucker Institute has its own ideas of what makes for a successful organization and it has concluded that 2021's best-managed company is Microsoft.

Microsoft Is Doing It Best

Microsoft -- whose stock price has soared 681 percent since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in June, 2014 -- has increased its overall score more than any other company tracked by the Drucker Institute since it began publishing this ranking in 2017.Here are three things that contributed to Nadella's success and how business leaders can use them to benefit their organizations.

Leadership Lessons

Most new leaders change the culture as the first order of business. Nadella changed Microsoft from a company that pushed its products on customers -- without regard for whether they were best for the customer -- to one that put customers first.Follow Nadella's approach to cultural change so your company can attract and motivate the best employees -- and they will help you win and keep more customers.

Create a culture of customer value creation

Nadella fostered innovation by encouraging people to adopt a new approach to product development. "We had to introduce and to promote new products and business models ([software as a service] vs. perpetual [licenses]). We had to drive our employees to interact with new corporate decision-makers - business vs. the original technical ones. We had to scale our employees to master new advanced products," Tenzer told me.

Innovate by fostering employee learning

When you change your company's culture and approach to innovation, your top executives will complain because you are forcing them to adjust how they think and act.Nadella issues an ultimatum to his 150 top executives: "Once you become a vice president, a partner in this endeavour, the whining is over. You can't say the coffee around here is bad, or there aren't enough good people, or I didn't get the bonus. To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in a pile of shit. You are the champions of overcoming constraints."

Hold people accountable for results

Make customers better off, encourage learning, and hold people accountable

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

3 Leadership Lessons From Microsoft, the Drucker Institute's Best-Managed Company

What’s the worst part about working at your company? Is it a lack of growth and development opportunities? Or perhaps impossible deadlines? Or ambiguous and chaotic organizational structures? If you want to ensure that any new hires are going to succeed, you need to assess their ability to survive and thrive amidst these negative aspects. If your company tends to assign projects with unrealistic deadlines, you owe it to yourself to hire people that can handle that without cracking under the pressure.

Hiring Resilient People

Of course, in an ideal world you would fix all of your organization’s negative aspects. But let’s be honest: The typical talent executive does not have the political wherewithal to snap their fingers and make those changes. 
So you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt, and that means hiring people who can handle these tough situations.

Tough Hires For A Tough Job

How do you actually assess whether someone can handle impossible deadlines, for example? Simply ask the question, “Could you tell me about a time you faced an impossible deadline?” or, “Could you tell me about a time your boss gave you an impossible deadline?”If you want to hire people who can survive in chaotic and ambiguous environments, you could ask, “Could you tell me about a time you faced competing priorities?”

What To Ask

We discovered that most interview questions have phrases at the end of them that ruin the questions’ effectiveness. These phrases include, “How did you solve it?” “How did you overcome that?,” and, “How did you successfully come through that?”We’ve completely lost the opportunity to hear about their failures and struggles because we literally told the candidate to only share their successes.

Ruining  A Question

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

How to Hire People Who Can Survive the Worst Parts of Your Company  - ERE

Being replaceable—a concept various company executives and business management books have promoted over the years—isn’t as precarious as it sounds; it just means that someone else at your workplace can do your job. That doesn’t mean the work isn’t important, or that you aren’t the best person for the role. But if you want to move on, you’ll have more luck getting promoted if there’s already a successor able and ready to take on the role.
Being considered irreplaceable on a team might sound good on paper—but it can actually put your career in a rut and stifle your opportunity to advance. Plus, it doesn’t actually benefit the company if you’re the only person who knows how to do your job.

Replaceable Doesn’t Mean Redundant

Being replaceable means that you’ll share knowledge and skills related to your role with other employees, which ultimately benefits the company and demonstrates to supervisors that you have leadership skills. 
Conversely, thinking of yourself as indispensable can be dangerous if you’re overestimating your worth to the employer.

Assuming You Are Indispensable Is Dangerous

If you’re a micromanager that’s always checking in, you’re telling the team that they don’t have the same level of skills as you to do the job. 
You might think you’re being indispensable and securing your role in the organization, but you’re likely demonstrating that you’re not a very good boss, which in the end makes your job less secure. You’re also more likely to burn out.

Micromanagement

<ul>
<li>Put everything in writing: Every process, task, or policy related to your job should be written down and stored in a drive where others can access it (ideally with a date or version number). </li>
<li>Support and train your colleagues: If no one else can do your job, flag it as a concern with your supervisor. </li>
<li>Delegate: Avoid the trap of thinking you need to sign off on every last task, especially when a colleague or direct report clearly has the skills needed for the job.</li>
</ul>

How To Be Replaceable

Why You Actually Should Make Yourself Replaceable at Work

What do you do when you feel stuck on a problem? Often asking a friend or family member for a pair of fresh eyes ends up being the best way to solve your issue. Even just explaining the problem out loud can help you generate new possible solutions.
Likewise, when you and your colleagues are feeling stumped about what to do, bringing in someone new to the organization can often be just the thing you need. While that new employee might stumble on a creative solution that has eluded everyone else, they are more likely to provide a great catalyst for generating new solutions.

A Fresh Pair Of Eyes

Part of what makes new employees valuable in problem solving is actually what makes it harder to work with them in general as they get acclimated to their new workplace. They just don’t share the assumptions and culture of the organization with everyone else. That can make it hard to explain things to new people. They don’t know how or why things are done the way they are.

New Hires Don't Share The Assumptions

New employees will end up asking a lot of questions about why things are done the way they are. Those questions reveal situations in which the initial reason why a procedure was put in place no longer holds.
These questions can also bring to light cases where people were sure they know why things were done as they are, and only realize the gap in their knowledge when asked to explain it.

New Employees Ask The Right Questions

New employees also bring a different base of knowledge than the one that has been applied to the problem so far. Even if describing the problem doesn’t change anyone’s view of what needs to be solved, this new knowledge has value. New employees should be encouraged to suggest things they know that seem related to the problem.The recommendations they make will trigger new thoughts in the entire team. Applying this new perspective to the problem will shift everyone out of the current way of approaching it, which is then likely to lead to new insights.

New Hires Have Different Knowledge

New employees also haven’t learned all the local jargon. Every organization has acronyms for units and procedures and other words that refer to particular individuals, clients, or processes. Those words carry a lot of assumptions with them that become part of the shared culture of everyone on the team.Because the new employees aren’t steeped in the local lingo, everyone on the team will be forced to change up the words they use to describe a problem. When talking to the new employee, people will have to explain the jargon terms, and so they will also use lots of synonyms.

They Use A Fresh Language

New employees can be great catalysts for solving problems that have long plagued a company.


productivity

Productivity

3 reasons why new hires are so good at solving problems

<ul><li>There are always underlining assumptions and biases behind every decision or recommendation.</li><li>Get to know the political landscape, the key stakeholders, shakers and movers.</li><li>Don’t rely too heavily on analytical tools or frameworks when assessing complex problems.</li><li>You will never have perfect information.</li><li>Communicate so that there are no surprises. Keep key people informed of progress.</li></ul>

Five Key Takeaways

<ul>
<li>Different assumptions lead to different outcomes. The real question is, where do those differences come from in the first place?</li>
<li>Know who the critical stakeholders are. Know who can implement the recommendations, and even more important, who can stop them from being implemented.</li>
<li>Have a good sense of the political landscape long before you make your final presentation.</li>
<li>Use both analysis and change management to transform those likely to resist your recommendations into supporters.</li>
<li>Even sophisticated financial analysis can be easily swayed by individual biases or corporate politics.</li>
</ul>

How Strategy Works: Important Points

The five forces framework does a great job of helping to identify the competitive threats in an industry. But using this tool to estimate the overall attractiveness of an industry is usually not that helpful.The five forces are kind of like the wind, the direction that competition within an industry is moving. Strategy is about positioning the firm relative to the prevailing winds and a way to make sure that the firm gets to where wants to go, no matter what direction the wind is blowing

The Five Forces Framework

The Five Forces model is widely used to analyze the industry structure of a company as well as its corporate strategy. Porter identified five undeniable forces that play a part in shaping every market and industry in the world, with some caveats. The five forces are frequently used to measure the competition intensity, attractiveness, and profitability of an industry or market.Porter's five forces are:1. Competition in the industry2. Potential of new entrants into the industry3. Power of suppliers4. Power of customers5. Threat of substitute products

In Brief: The Five Forces Model

<ul><li>Keep in mind whenever you see someone apply one of these analytical tools, whether it’s the five forces framework or net present value analysis or whatever, they are just tools. It’s the skills, interests, and motives of the person using the tool that determine whether the outcome of the analysis is reasonable.</li><li>When managers present a point of view, assume their point of view reflects some combination of how things actually are and how they want things to be.</li><li>Many managers do an analysis to reaffirm what they already believe.</li></ul>

What The Manager Already Believes

Three things to think about when considering cooperating with other businesses within a firm to gain synergies:<ul><li>Will it be good for business? Will it increase revenue or cut costs?</li><li>Could we achieve cost or quality advantages on our own without cooperation?</li><li>Could we realize these advantages by working with an outside provider?</li></ul>

Gaining Synergies

<ul>
<li>Value: Is the strategy valuable? Does it increase a firm’s revenues or reduce its cost compared to not pursuing the strategy?</li>
<li>Rarity: Does a firm possess unusual skills or other assets that the strategy would utilize?</li>
<li>Imitate: How long will it take other firms to imitate your strategy? Strategies that are hard to imitate – assuming they are also valuable and rare – are more likely to be a source of long-lasting competitive advantages.</li>
<li>Organization: Is a firm organized to execute and protect its sources of advantage?</li>
</ul>

The VRIO framework To Test A Strategy

<ul><li>Have a list of questions prepared before you enter your interview.</li><li>Make it clear that you need to work through your protocol (list of questions) and then just keep going back to it. I usually send mine ahead of the interviewee, along with a summary report of what we know and what we need to know.</li><li>A brief bio and engagement summary prepared in advance will help interviews go better.</li><li>Always ask for names of other people that you should follow up with after the interview is over.</li><li>Always ask for more information sources when you send a thank you note to the people you interview.</li></ul>

Taking An Interview: Strategy Points

Core competencies are activities in the value chain that create economic value, that are rare among a firm’s competitors, and that competitors find difficult to imitate.Technologies by themselves are not core competencies. But actions firms take to exploit these technologies can be core competencies. And they can sometimes be a source of sustained advantage.

Core Competencies

There are a number of reasons why it may be difficult for one firm to imitate the strategy of another, such as…<ul><li>Team-based skills</li><li>Legal restrictions on imitation</li><li>Reputation or brand</li><li>Switching costs</li><li>Search costs</li><li>Application experience</li></ul>

Imitating A Strategy

<ul><li>Ability to evaluate business alternatives independently and subjectively</li><li>Working with a team of extremely smart people who can get access to a great deal of good information</li><li>The time to focus on the future of the company rather than being caught up in the day to day responsibilities of running it</li><li>Be well rounded but figure out where your unique area of strength is. Every successful consultant I know has a world-class spike of experience in some area.</li></ul>

The Value Of A Consultant

<ul><li>Be aware of the politics of the situation and work them into your strategy.</li><li>Preview leaders ahead of time. No surprises.</li><li>Try to anticipate questions members of the top management team might have about your process or your recommendations.</li><li>Keep key players and clients informed of progress.</li><li>Always address the group, not the screen when giving presentations.</li></ul>

Tips For Your Career

All of the theories, frameworks, and tactics you learn in business school have their limitations. This is a book about how strategic decisions are made in the real world

What I Didn't Learn in Business School is a compelling read---whether you're a recent business school grad struggling to apply your new knowledge or an experienced leader who already knows that no strategy is created in a vacuum. --Book Jacket.

strategy

Strategy

Meet Justin Campbell. He's a new MBA graduate who's landed a job with a strategy consultancy. His engagement team is on a mission: help HGS Inc., a specialty chemicals firm, define and execute a strategy for exploiting a textile technology the company developed. Justin and his team deploy state-of-the-art strategy tools to analyze the attractiveness of potential markets for the technology. But they soon realize the tools don't help them grapple with the human side of strategy--including political forces swirling within HGS. Everyone involved in the engagement is biased and insecure, brilliant and hardworking, selfish and lazy, loyal and dedicated. Justin and his cohorts aren't "real"--What I Didn't Learn in Business School is a business novel. But they're realistic: they're just like us. Their story reveals the limitations of strategy tools and demonstrates tactics for navigating the messy, human dynamics that can make or break a company's strategy efforts. This engaging book uses the power of story to present potent lessons for anyone seeking to excel at strategy management. It's a compelling read--whether you're an MBA grad struggling to apply what you learned or in the fray and eager to see what MBAs get wrong when they land in the real world.

Jay Barney

Trish Gorman Clifford

What I Didn't Learn in Business School

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