MAKING TIME FOR STRATEGY

A self-help book that presents series of tactics for freeing up one’s entrepreneurial power.

“You're not alone,” writes leadership consultant Medcalf at the beginning of his nonfiction debut, getting right down to essentials. “All around you, leaders, teams and whole businesses are frantically scrambling to meet operational demands.” Medcalf aims the advice in this book at such overwhelmed people, offering them a wide array of pointers, such as using as a Commitment Inventory to eliminate wasteful activities, including “zombie meetings” (“those recurring appointments that used to have life and purpose, and now don’t seem to achieve much”), and creating a Projects List to help distinguish between, as Medcalf insightfully puts it, “projects and next actions.” To help readers feel more in control (“I’m calling on you to be the powerful person you are,” he writes), he unfolds intriguing concepts, such as “Strategic Time,” broken into quadrants of “Tactics,” “Influence,” “Mindset,” and “Environment.” Along the way, he reminds readers that they can’t resist what often feels like an “onslaught” without making use of the “powerful weapon” of their will to cut through what’s unimportant. Over the course of this book, Medcalf does have a tendency to indulge far too often in TED Talk-style soundbites, such as “Context frames content,” “tiny is transformational,” and the questionable “every ‘yes’ hides a ‘no.’ ” However, over the course of this book’s fast-paced and well-designed chapters, the author manages to effectively take readers through a wide variety of challenges that they may encounter as they attempt to grow their business. Throughout, he employs a strong, intensely readable prose style that will keep readers’ attention, and many of the concepts he conveys along the way are convincing.

A thought-provoking, if sometimes overly quippy, business advice manual.