MEASURE, EXECUTE, WIN!

AVOIDING STRATEGIC INITIATIVE DEBACLES

by Alex Castro ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2019

In his debut business book, Castro, the CEO of business-technology company M Corp, aims to help corporate leaders make better choices about which initiatives to pursue.

In the corporate world, decision-making at the executive level is “practically medieval,” asserts the author. Too often, he says, C-suite leaders make major business decisions based on past experiences or gut feelings rather than looking at whether their company has the capability to carry them out. As a result, even when CEOs have great ideas, there’s a 50% chance that they’ll fail, according to the author, because they simply don’t consider whether their ideas are feasible. When problems arise, leaders tend to blame the process—or lower-level employees—instead of questioning whether they made the right choices in the first place. In this book, Castro persuasively argues that corporate leaders need to look to data to make better decisions. Specifically, they need an “execution capability score,” which he dubs the “ReM Score,” based on a 14-point metric that includes specifics such as “Technical Capabilities,” “Business Process and Rules Maturity,” “Subject Matter Understanding,” and more abstract concepts, such as “Vision.” By using this analysis, he says, companies “no longer have to rely on a strategy of hope, of crossed fingers and hunches.” Overall, the author displays an unshakeable belief in the power of information. Readers who share his conviction that all things are measurable will embrace his ideas, but skeptics may still wonder about the more abstract, gut-level element of the decision-making process. Castro has done his homework, though, and his book cites research that backs up his claims about the importance of looking at hard data and avoiding biases as well as a few real-world case studies. However, things get somewhat vague when it comes to exactly how to go about capturing and analyzing data within an organization, as Castro seems intent on pointing people toward using his own proprietary “ReM Score” process.   

A book that makes a strong case that better data, analyzed properly, is key to business success. 

Pub Date: July 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1335-5

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing

Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION