Strategy

The Barna Research Group is world-renowned for its research and studies on Christian organizations, religious, secular and cultural trends, and organizational behavior.

I wanted a bare knuckle, no-nonsense practical book on leadership I could put to use with my management team, my sales people, and my ministry groups. This was it.

Barna describes four types of leaders: directing, strategic, team-building, and operational. The first thing I did was find myself in the mix, naturally. His insights are clear and very perceptive. Then I evaluated my managers. His insights into each style's nature, strengths, and growth opportunities were invaluable; especially as a mirror on myself and how I tend to interact with others.

He then sent me into my mission and vision statements for the organization and examine those in light of God's vision for me, my business, and His will. The time I have spent reflecting on this portion of the book and clarifying our objectives in light of God's plans, will certainly the business and my life.

A terrific book and a must-have for every organizational leader, father, and fellow traveller on the Christian journey.

This book is well worth the reading. Barna presents some good ideas about leadership, based on his experience. He presents his own theories about what makes a leader and the issues facing a leader.

His book is well worth studying. The book should be included in any course on leadership, secular or not. He make a good argument that leader are called to the task. I disagree with his premise that leadership can't really be taught. Christians in leadership roles need to read this book, and ponder the difficult questions he asks at the end of many chapters.

Bob Garratt's "The Fish Rots..." for me is a first-of-a-kind kind of book. While tons and tons of management books deluge us every day this particular book stands out by expertly handling a somewhat "uncharted" territory. A territory that ordinary mortals like the majority of us have not much inkling on...on what really transpires (or what SHOULD transpire)in those subduedly-lighted, eerily silent, wood-paneled top-floor suites of corporate HQ reserved for the Board, accessible only by a non-stop key-driven elevator. The book struck my interest deeply that it inspired me to recommend it to our Business Intelligence group to develop an information system on that will support The Learning Board's four directoral dilemmas as vividly treated in Mr. Garrat's book. All these years we spoke of and endlessly developed and maintained management information systems. I reckon that we should now look at developing a Board information system using BI, data warehousing, management science techniques, external monitoring systems and so on. With the crisis of confidence in Corporate America brought about by the boards of Enron, WorldCom, etc I believe such system will help "clean up" the mess and bring back the past glory days of American corporations. Kudos to Mr. Garratt for an excellent book !!!

Mr. Garratt does not pull his punches! Swinging from the start, Garratt lights the fire under the Director's seats causing screams that delight those who work for them. Enjoyable reading that motivates contemplation and further discussion at the corporate level.

While focused in Great Britain, Garratt sites examples from around the globe that make it easy to picture and apply. Used as a learning and teaching tool (this should be a textbook), "The Fish Rots from the Head" is a natural with a great deal of down-to-earth common sense. This should be required reading by directors in the board room, thoroughly discussed in staff meetings, and shared sincerely with all employees.

If directors of the world read, understood, and applied Bob Garratt's message, we wouldn't call it work!

I'm using this book as a crutch in my volunteer activities with a local non-profit. It's excellently written and helps as a primer for both the strategic and tactical parts of our efforts. I highly recommended as a starting point and a reference for any individual or group that is looking for a good framework to help approach the highly-complex and difficult world of getting the fuel to make a non-profit successful.

The Jossey-Bass Nonprofit & Public Management Series adds another excellent resource with the publication of Mal Warwick's book, The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success: A mission-based guide to achieving your goals.

The central thesis of this nearly 300-page volume is that the way you raise funds for your organization can help you achieve your mission. Warwick finds that too often organizations tie their fund raising to short-term, fiscal year goals that require fund raisers to "get the money in the door now" rather than taking the time to cultivate donors for larger, future gifts.

In The Five Strategies, Warwick introduces the reader to the GIVES System, a method for analyzing, planning and evaluating an organization's fundraising strategy. The strategies are: Growth, Involvement, Visibility, Efficiency and Stability, hence GIVES.

In discussing Growth as a fundraising strategy, Warwick is not focusing on raising more money per se, but rather on broadening the donor base, having more donors next year than this year, and still more the year after that. A Growth strategy, according to this book, is dynamic and is characterized by audacious goals, bold leadership and low entry-level gifts.

Involvement as a strategy takes organizations beyond seeking gifts from donors to building stronger relationships with them. When supporters are active and committed, organizations can raise far more money. Organizations for whom public opinion is crucial are encouraged to adopt a Visibility strategy. Characteristics of the strategy are broad public interest, many stakeholders and brand identification.

Raising money at the lowest possible cost per dollar raised is the key to an Efficiency strategy. Planned giving, major gift programs, foundation and corporate grant solicitation and monthly giving are among the tactics that can be employed in an efficiency strategy. Warwick warns, however, that efficiency isn't always the best approach. A careful analysis of the organization's strategic choices is required.

Endurance is the core attribute of the Stability strategy. Among the tactics that can be used in a stability strategy are to build an endowment fund; employ electronic funds transfer (EFT) for fulfillment of donor pledges and engage in diversified fundraising activities.

Selecting a strategy must take into account the life cycle of the development program, the age of the organization, or both. For each of the five strategies, Warwick provides several real-life examples, not all of them success stories. This is very helpful for understanding how it might work and in identifying potential pitfalls. Warwick points out that a single strategy is not likely to remain appropriate for all time for any given organization.

The book provides details on how to pick the right strategy for your organization, common obstacles to implementing the strategies, what fundraising tactics will work with each strategy and how to evaluate your strategies.

My only disagreement with Warwick is in his definitions of vision and mission. He defines vision as why your organization exists and mission as what it does. I see the mission as clarification of purpose and an indicator of why the organization is doing what it does, while vision is what the organization aspires to look like after it succeeds in implementing its strategies and achieving its potential. That difference of opinion aside, I think the book is a wonderful resource for everyone involved in the fundraising effort, from CEO's to development officers to board members to donors themselves.

Warwick's previous books have been related to direct response fundraising and most are "How-To" books. If you are looking for a book that provides a formula or set of instructions, The Five Strategies is not it. What you will find in this book, however, is a way to think strategically about your fundraising efforts. Mal Warwick's hope with The Five Strategies is that he can help those who work for and on behalf of not-for-profit organizations understand the consequences of the resource allocation choices they face and do a better job raising money for a sector that never has enough.

The book is concisely written and loaded with practical examples. A must for the reference shelf of bond professionals.

The author delivers clear and concise explanations on the more esoteric aspects of fixed-income securities. It is written using an easy to understand, building-block approach which enables the reader to grasp the theory behind creating synthetic securites. This book goes beyond textbook definitions and introduces essential strategies which can be used by trading managers, risk managers, and individual investors.

Forcible entry is one of the most important aspects in the fire service because it deals with one of the 3 primary objectives, preservation of property.

Most forms of forcible entry are touched upon in this book. There aren't as many instructions to force entry as I'd like but it'll have to do. Doors, walls, windows, etc are all dealt with. There is decent coverage of the various building materials that a firefighter will come in contact with. There are a few things that aren't dealt with as they should have been, such as elevator doors, and revolving doors.

It is a terrible shame that this book was taken out of print. Even worse is that the book that replaced it is nowhere near the caliber of Forcible Entry. The content of this book needs to be understood by all members of the fire service. This is one of our most important issues that we need to take seriously.

I've owned a copy of this book since it first came out in 1987. It is still the most comprehensive book dealing specifically with forcing entry. It is clear and concise in describing a myriad of methods of safely breaking into strucutures. Although it is written for the fire services by the International Fire Service Training Association, I bought it and still use it for law enforcement high risk entries, especially SWAT. It is the only book I'm aware of any where that deals specifically with this complex subject. DEFINITELY worth the money.

The Forgotten Air Force: French Air Doctrine In The 1930s by Lt. Col. Anthony Christopher Cain, USAF, is an informed and informative history of the French air force, which despite its many ranks of talented officers and pilots, suffered from incompetent high command and was ultimately crushed in the early years of World War II. Meticulously researched and presented, The Forgotten Air Force closely studies an important and often overlooked facet of the war and the nation. Cain is to be commended for his meticulous research leading to this seminal and enduring contribution to Military Aviation History Studies.

This is the best account of the problems facing the French air force at the beginning of the Second World war. The first part of the book deals with the design problems in developing an air craft that could fulfill both the fighter and the bomber roles and how this resulted in failure. Cain then describes how the French air force had a variety of doctrines in the nineteen thirites but ended up being tied to the army. The most intriging aspect of this book is the dilemma that generals in the French airforce had to face in using experienced personnel for trianing or having them placed on the frontlines. This dilemma strangled the French air force in the opening phases of World War II. I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in knowing the reasons why the French air force was so ineffective in the path of the German Luftwaffe.

This is an excellent book that is good for both academics and practicioners. Practicioners may find the indepth theory discussion a bit cumbersome, but it is worth the read to find the gems of wisdom.

The book is an excellent coverage of the basics of organization theory, covering enough economic theory to have it make sense.

An excellent book for graduate students that want to study organizations. Even if you are not an economics student, it will help you understand the language that the economic organizational theorists use.

Between the covers of this dryly titled and presumably tedious tome is a lively collection of a dozen essays spanning over twenty years of original thinking and outstanding scholarship by one of Harvard's foremost professors. Jensen, with a bit of help from colleagues such as Eugene Fama, Kevin Murphy, and the late William H. Meckling, attacks such diverse issues as the nature of man, the theory of the firm, residual claims and organizational form, agency costs, executive compensation, and organizational performance measurement.

In the author's words, "Economists have historically concentrated on the analysis of markets while treating the organizations in them as black boxes that act as profitmaximizing entities, (and)...behavioral organization theorists have largely focused on the internal aspects of organizations, ignoring the forces of markets in which those organizations exist." In this collection, Jensen bridges these two disparate views, utilizing rigorous economic analysis to forge a superior understanding of both the firm and the individuals who are its employees, partners, and owners.

Organizations, at the most basic level, are networks of individuals drawn together to accomplish a task. The most appropriate place to start is with a robust theory of the individual. Economists are typically accused of viewing individuals only as money-maximizing entities ("economic man"). Jensen demolishes this with an integrative model of the individual as resourceful, evaluative, and maximizing, or REMM. Four postulates exist in the REMM model: Every individual cares, each individual's wants are unlimited, each individual is a maximizer, and the individual is resourceful. The REMM model is contrasted against basic economic, sociological, and psychological models. The REMM model, a fusion derived from features of each, dominates each of its sources in explanatory power of behavior.

From this base, Jensen proceeds to explore diverse topics, including specific and general knowledge, and the role that knowledge possessed by individuals plays in organizational development and behavior, alienability of decision rights, residual claims and agency theory. Two of the dozen articles review how residual claims influence organizational structure. For example, Jensen observes that, in the financial industry, insurance companies and savings banks have been organized as "mutual" organizations in which the policyholders or depositors are the residual claimants, whereas commercial banking has nearly always been organized as stock companies. Further, professional services organizations have typically been organized as partnerships. There is no marketbased reason why an insurance company should choose to be a mutual rather than a stock company, or why a professional services firm could not be organized as a stock company with public ownership (as some have done or are considering). The role of the residual claimant, however, plays a powerful role in the organizational structure.

A welcome surprise was a chapter on executive compensation and CEO compensation. In essence, Jensen identifies the problem of CEO compensation as an agency problem, unchanged from the same agency problems identified by Adam Smith. Building on the framework in the earlier sections, he explores how changes in firm wealth impacts, or fails to impact, the wealth of the CEO. Jensen identified that in many situations, particularly in the largest organizations, increases in firm wealth had little impact on CEO wealth and, presumably, on CEO willingness to increase shareholder value.

CEO compensation packages today, with the emphasis on stock options and the commensurate possibility of immense financial rewards, are dramatically different than when Jensen and his colleagues wrote this and the other articles in the section. While no single individual or article can be credited with the sweeping changes in CEO compensation, there has been a surge in both the attention paid to and the subsequent increase in firm value since the publication of this work in CEO compensation. Jensen diagnosed the problem, and the alignment of CEO compensation and shareholder interests seems to be resolved.

This is not a traditional "popular" book on organizations; rather it is a collection of insightful concepts drawn from years of teaching and research. It is a coherent, orderly, economic explanation of how and why firms organize and the challenges inherent in small and large businesses. In Foundations of Organizational Strategy, Jensen opens the "black box" of the organization and provides a coherent and logical framework for understanding how and why organizations develop and operate in the market. His attempt succeeds admirably and will reward the reader with not only concepts and models of theoretical organizational behavior but also keen insight applicable in day-to-day organizational endeavors.

Edward J. "Kip" Smith

He probably hasn't received the acclaim he deserves, but this intermediate player (1600 on ICC) thinks Byron Jacobs' opening works are among the finest on the market. He is a great writer, and has that magical combination of text and variations that sucks you in and really teaches you an opening. This book on the French Classical is one of his best. This opening is very popular and you will be able to use it in a lot ofyour games. The definitive source. Highly recommended.

Byron Jacobs' French Classical tells of a strategy which leads to unbalanced positions for both master players and club players. Variations on themes and full coverages of basic elements for both sides are included.

This book provides solid, rational, and most importantly, actionable guidance for managers and executives faced with the challenge of identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing their IT spend. The authors provide a concise, structured framework which leads the reader through a step-by-step process to make reasoned decisions about both steady state ("lights on") expenditures and new project investments. The writing style is clear, fluid, and easily digestible. Each chapter includes fact-filled charts and diagrams to make the concepts come alive, along with a chapter summary, targeted questions, plus additional reading references. From defining goals, asking the penetrating "right questions," through charting a path to implementation, this truly is a guidebook to learning how to control spending while concurrently maximizing the impact on your bottom line. This book should be required reading before the beginning of your next planning cycle. Whether you've been in the IT business for a year, a decade or longer, you will undoubtedly benefit from the multiple layers of insight contained within this book. Note: I also recommend sales personnel absorb the concepts in this book -- if you understand how your customers are evaluating IT investment decisions, you can communicate the value your offerings will deliver in a manner which will better resonate with the decision maker.

I've read a stack of books related to this subject, and this is one of two books that I think hit the bullseye and that I recommend to peers and clients (the other is Value-Driven IT Management, ISBN 0750659254).

What I most like about this book is the highly focused, clearly defined approach to transforming strategy into action. In fact, 'action' is the main characteristic of this book, both in writing pace and in the results you can achieve if you follow the map the authors provide. Chapter 1 leads you through defining your goals that links the strategy to your bottom line. This establishes the methodology that you'll follow through the rest of the book.

Each subsequent chapter is a milestone in the process of transforming strategy into action. What I like is the consistent format, which starts with "Ask the Right Questions", then listing steps, ending with a summary. More importantly, the bottom line remains the focus of this book from start to finish. This keeps the reader's attention on the goals, business issues and costs.

The topics covered in each step represent best practices that should be present in any organization that is mature enough to undertake a business-IT alignment. For example, portfolio management, prioritization techniques, and aligning to a value chain are addressed, In addition, the challenges faced by both business and IT are uncovered, with advice on how to meet them during the process. Finally, the book sets forth the transformation process in a well ordered sequence that will get you from inception to meeting all objectives if followed. The chapters on scoring and measurement are invaluable.

One topic that makes this book exceptionally valuable is the introduction of the Business Value Maturity Model™. This model, in my opinion, is the missing link in the quest for Business-IT alignment initiatives, and one that I hope gets wider dissemination than in this book. Other aspects of the book that I especially like include the excellent use of graphs and diagrams, and the absence of empty claims and theory. The material is clear, actionable and realistic. Think of this book as both a compass and blueprint. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough, particularly to organizations that are struggling with business-IT alignment.

This sobering book, authored by a former head of State Department Intelligence during the Kennedy Administration, warns against the delusion that "mutually assured destruction" continues preventing nuclear warfare. Indeed, at the rate the world is progressing, nuclear warfare is likely. Can we comfortable look at crises in India-Pakistan, the Middle East, Iran-Iraq, and the two Koreas and conclude that nuclear war is impossible? Further, should the current government in Russia fall, can we be certain its replacement will not be one that rekindles some Cold War aspects?
Roger Hilsman's book is fascinating in two aspects. It first serves as a detailed yet readable history of nuclear weapons policies. It then presents a thoughtful yet controversial proposal on what the author argues will prevent nuclear war.
Nuclear war can be started by nations or by terrorists, Hilsman warns. Leaders can miscalculate, be insane, or lose control of situations. During war, all three such possibilities can easily occur.
Hilsman's conclusion that a world government replacing nationalistic desires (which causes most wars) and that is capable of policing rogue nuclear threats is the only solution is a conclusion bound to provoke dissension. Indeed, even Hilsman realizes such an eventuality will be impossible for some time. National pride is too strong for nations to give power to a higher governmental authority. Still, the thought this is the only way to prevent a nuclear catastrophe should create concern. If the world can recognize the dangers and begin moving in this direction (which is possible as evidenced by Europe's acceptance of the European Community), there is hope.

This book is truly thought-provoking, and Dr. Hilsman deserves high praise for even tackling the subject of what we can do to avoid a nuclear war. He has written superbly of past nuclear policies, such as deterrence strategies of the United States and Russia. It is quite apparent that he was close to the centers of power during much of the most dangerous time, and he offers insights into the Kennedy administration especially.

His possible solutions, including a world government, are less satisfying than his recounting of the history of the problem. He himself admits we are not likely to see a true world government which could be the legitimate exerciser of power, but he does propose some other measures which could lessen the possibilities of nuclear war. He makes a valid point in that in some ways our present international organizations are carrying out some of the functions of a world government and causing nuclear war to be less thinkable.

The book is well worth reading, even if you don't agree with the author's conclusions. His summations of the history of the nuclear situation are truly masterful and should be read by all serious persons who know how close we have come to the final nightmare and how we are not yet free of some high risks.