A user-friendly tool for turning strategy into reality.
In this handbook, a corporate strategist emphasizes the importance of executing plans well.
“Across industries, something similar happens all the time,” writes Ertell, who describes a generic business leader’s “bold new strategy at an all-hands meeting.” Despite the top-down enthusiasm regarding the visionary idea, the strategy’s initial oomph fades within months: “Priorities shift. Communication breaks down. Details get muddled, and momentum stalls.” Ertell cites a statistic that 90% of organizations fail to successfully execute strategies. In this guidebook, the author encourages organizational leaders to avoid the titular “Strategy Trap” of focusing on attention-grabbing visionary strategies while “short-changing the conditions people need to successfully turn them into reality.” Ertell centers the book on what he calls the “Six Cs,” and divides the book into six corresponding parts, with each offering multiple chapters of detailed advice. To start, the author urges a “Co-Creation” model for shaping a strategy at its start, incorporating the views of the rank-and-file employees who will be tasked with implementing it. This is accompanied by “Clarity” and “Capacity,” both of which emphasize specificity in defining the plan and ensuring that resources and time are available to execute it. These efforts, Ertell says, should also include meaningful and effective “Communication” and “Coordination” among various teams. The concluding section highlights the importance of “Coaching,” whereby leadership continually supports their teams and reinforces accountability, which, in turn, helps to maintain momentum.
Each of these “Six Cs” make intuitive sense, although some may find them simplistic; that said, the author makes a convincing case of how easily even battle-hardened corporate executives can lose sight of best practices when driven by a new vision. This guidebook includes more than 80 endnotes and insights gleaned from the author’s conversations with several Fortune 500 CEOs, which he blends with accounts of his own experiences as a business executive. The author not only shares his personal successes—which include achieving a senior VP position at Tower.com and working on strategic initiatives with Borders, Nike, and other corporations—but, notably, his failures as well. For instance, he describes the initial flop of a Borders customer-rewards program he helped create, highlighting early failures related to poor execution—specifically, securing buy-in from cashiers who “don’t care as much about corporate priorities as they care about the customer standing right in front of them.” Meaningful execution of the rewards-program strategy didn’t occur, he says, until leadership shifted their focus to the employees on the ground. The book also provides occasional examples outside corporate America, such as the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda in getting his vision of the musical Hamilton to the stage. Although the book features many engaging anecdotes from business leaders, this is fundamentally a practical reference work centered on “the real, day-to-day challenges of executing strategies.” Ertell eschews lengthy narratives and instead employs an efficient writing style that prioritizes bulleted lists and practical checklists. The book also includes ample text-box vignettes, charts, diagrams, and other visual elements.
A user-friendly tool for turning strategy into reality.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781646872329
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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