Skip to main content

Book Review: Optimizing Strategy for Results

Lead author Timothy Mwololo Waema, Ph.D.

Optimizing Strategy for Results is a concise and action-packed guide for leaders, management consultants, and facilitators intent on developing and executing strategies that support operational and business goals. Drs. Timothy Mwololo Waema, Evans Baiya, and Ron Price have leveraged their deep experience and insights in entrepreneurship and international business to offer a sequence of practical steps for envisioning, gathering support, and communicating the advancement of mission-critical goals and objectives.

Anchored by a focus on anticipating unexpected challenges, the authors emphasize the importance of aligning purpose and vision to ensure preparedness and resilience to face volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). They discuss the elements of a company culture that is responsive to change, including an orientation toward continuous learning, people-centric values, and an unrelenting focus on the needs of the customer. Each chapter highlights critical skills to succeed in an ever-competitive landscape, outlining tools, accountabilities, and key takeaways. The list of crucial questions for each stage of the strategy development and implementation process was highly invaluable.

With my academic background in business and twenty+ year career in communications and diversity management, I have read many business books focused on strategy, including classics like Execution by Ram Charan and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Optimizing Strategy for Results takes the best qualities of management volumes, offering case studies and practical applications of critical concepts. This book offers the bedrock of strategy development, with useful lessons for founders and entrepreneurs of early-stage companies.

For leaders who have been through iterative strategy sessions, some tools may seem familiar. They are presented with a different spin without much context or explanation for the validity or necessity of a new approach. For example, the authors discuss using the SLOC analysis, which stands for strengths, limitations, opportunities, and challenges, for internal and external assessments. SLOC is an iteration of the SWOT framework that focuses on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. At first glance, there isn’t much difference between the two approaches, and the authors failed to address the distinction. Other tools – like the company scorecard – appear to be a revision of the balanced scorecard model, which has been widely used for the last few decades.

For busy executive leaders, the best aspect of Optimizing Strategy for Results is its brevity. It gets to the point immediately, without much of the buildup of explaining the research and evidence supporting the frameworks. I appreciated the different tools designed to enable teams to understand constraints, prioritize needs, and make sound strategic decisions. From the lens of a people manager, it was essential to know how emotional intelligence may be applied to an organizational context. Strategic intelligence drives change by understanding company culture and adapting to external challenges.

 

Buy from Capital Books

 

Popular posts from this blog

Medicine Wheel for the Planet

Jennifer Grenz, PhD       Working toward ecological healing requires awareness of how Indigenous ancestral knowledge and living ways can complement Western scientific approaches to environmental restoration and protection practices. Dr. Jennifer Grenz (Nlaxa’pamux mixed ancestry) worked for more than two decades as a field researcher and practitioner for environmental nonprofit organizations, where she worked with different levels of government, including First Nations in Canada. "Medicine Wheel for the Planet" compiles Grenz’s most potent realizations about the lack of forward movement in addressing an impending ecological catastrophe.  A warming climate impacts not only human lives but also the natural balance that relies on reciprocal relationships rooted in deep connections to the land. She uses the metaphor of the four directions of the Indigenous “medicine wheel” to invite openness to Indigenous teachings, letting go of colonial narratives, merging lessons f...
Read more

Memento - Embracing the Darkness

Dennis "Dizzy" Doan Stories about overcoming and persevering through family dysfunction, poverty, and mental health challenges offer hope and the promise of better days. Dennis “Dizzy” Doan’s memoir Memento: Embracing the Darkness is one such story, with the added complexity of being raised in an immigrant Vietnamese family. Doan’s parents dealt with the mental and emotional aftermath of war, which forcibly uprooted them from their homeland. In the United States, they struggled to create a safe and stable life for their two sons. Doan shares his journey of finding himself, his craft, and eventually a successful tattoo business in Southern California despite personal strife and run-ins with the law. Doan is best known for developing the aesthetic language to combat anti-Asian hate that erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. His art series titled “Model Minority” went viral, sparking conversation about Asian American identities and harmful stereotypes. In Memento, Doan showcase...
Read more

Lucky Tomorrow: Stories

Deborah Jiang-Stein's debut collection of short stories explores the lives of people who are often overlooked. From flower street vendors to families torn apart by ambition, to a woman on death row awaiting redemption amidst a tumult of memories, Jiang-Stein vividly depicts their struggles. Each story is set in various cities where she has lived: Seattle, Minneapolis, and Tokyo. While these settings differ, they share a common indifference toward human suffering. In "Lucky Tomorrow, " each vignette offers a glimpse into harsh realities that are often difficult to confront, yet are grounded in the lived experiences of those frequently unseen and cast aside. The stories convey powerful themes of longing and fleeting hopes for fresh starts that may never arrive. Although the themes are specific to the characters, they resonate with the universal human experience. As an activist and advocate, Jiang-Stein has made a significant impact through her extensive work with women...
Read more