Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning and Leveraging Strategic Resources - Hardcover

Ritchie-Dunham, James L.; Rabbino, Hal T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471497312 ISBN 13: 9780471497318

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2001

Synopsis

'Most organizations can't execute strategy. Complexity is their enemy. Managing from Clarity provides a roadmap for introducing systems thinking to your organization. Read it; it's a snapshot of how strategy will be managed in the 21st Century.'
David P. Norton, President, Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, co-author of the best-selling The Balanced Scorecard and The Strategy-Focused Organization
'If you're not a systems thinker, you're not a good business leader. A few born leaders do it through intuition. For all the rest, there's Managing from Clarity. The book will spell out for you how to build your strategic agenda and how to align your leadership team around it.'
Francis Gouillart, CEO, Emergence Consulting, co-author of the best-selling Transforming the Organization
'this book [turns] the art of system dynamics interventions into science for the first time. For those of us who live the successes and the frustrations of organizations every day, this is a gift.'
Jorge Rufat-Latre, Director, Strategos
'a powerful set of ideas and frameworks for anyone with strategic responsibility.'
Kim Warren, Teaching Fellow, Strategic & International Management, London Business School, author of Competitive Strategy Dynamics
'Finally, someone has harnessed the power of System Dynamics and crafted it into a useful tool for strategy development and strategic management . . . [this book] demonstrates the potential insight that can come from systems thinking and its power to align an organization around a single view of the business model and strategic direction.'
Michael J. Puleo, Director, Deloitte Consulting
'combine[s] the conceptual insights from the academic literature with the savvy of consultants to provide a sound approach to managing any organization.'
James S. Dyer, The Fondren Centennial Chair in Business, University of Texas at Austin
'an intelligent and vivid introduction to an extremely powerful set of concepts and tools for strategy development.'
Andreas Koch, Principal, L.E.K. Consulting

About this title

From the Publisher:

Reviews

Finally, someone has harnessed the power of System Dynamics and crafted it into a useful tool for strategy development and strategic management. Jim and Hal's GRASP methodology provides an accessible framework for designing the inputs and understanding the outputs of System Dynamics. Managing from Clarity clearly demonstrates the potential insight that can come from systems thinking and its power to align an organization around a single view of the business model and strategic direction. (Michael J. Puleo, Director, Deloitte Consulting)

Business interactions and outcomes these days are far too complex to be understood, much less managed, in terms of traditional strategic thinking tools. The Managing from Clarity process enables business leaders to "get their mind around" the dynamic, multi-faceted system that IS their enterprise. This way of thinking has enabled me and my leadership team to better understand our business, clearly define our interdependencies, and, from this place of greater clarity, identify those few, critical "leverage points" from among the host of options on the table. Bottom-line, managing from clarity has enabled us to make better-informed resource allocation decisions. (Dan Farell, President, Distribution, TXU Electric & Gas)

The concepts and methods in Managing from Clarity address four critical challenges that futurists commonly face: characterizing complex issues (systems), building common understanding, providing insight into leverage points for taking action to move the system, and suggesting likely alternative futures. The insights gained frequently stimulate breakthrough thinking and empower action. While we will never totally take mystery out of the future, Managing from Clarity can help a great deal in reducing the unknown! (Jay Forrest, Futurist, Pteragenesis)

Over the last few decades, antibiotic resistance has emerged as a public health issue. Although everyone believes that use and resistance are correlated, the real how and why of the correlation is a bit of a "black box." Using the Managing from Clarity process has revealed some surprising interactions (leverage points), and confirmed the value of surveillance data. (Kate Hendricks, MD, MPH&TM, Board Certified Preventive Medicine, Texas)

Strategy is a dynamic process and as such requires dynamic tools. In its ability to model dynamic systems be they a business, a strategy, or a plague 'System Dynamics' is moving to center stage as an indispensable tool for enabling strategists and decision makers to manage from clarity. It is as central to the strategist's 'toolkit' as Excel is to a financial analyst or the genetic code is to a biochemist. Ritchie-Dunham and Rabbino describe their subject matter as Managing from Clarity. Their extraordinary contribution uses multiple practical examples, case studies, analogies, and a logical conceptual thread to enable the reader to learn with clarity. Congratulations on a fine treatment of a difficult subject. (Hans-Peter von Sicard, Executive Vice President, Emergence Consulting, former VP of Practice Development in Renaissance)

The Managing from Clarity process structured our thinking about how the critical pieces of our organization connect. It also helped us identify where were the key strategic resources and leverage points for our firm, and what we could realistically achieve, with regards to the complex and dynamic challenges our bank was facing at the time. The process and tools provided us a practical and effective way to get our group and its goals aligned around what really matters for our organization as a whole. This clarity allowed us to focus our energy as a management team around the problem itself and it strengthened our ability and enthusiasm to work together. Most importantly, we will never see our world as we did before. (Elizabeth Martinez, Senior Vice President, Department of Structured Finance, Banco Nacional de Mexico)

En mi opinion una de las razones que otorgan valor de la metodologia GRASP, radica en que esta se concentra en "el grupo de liderazgo," en como este puede determinar el rumbo y como refuerza la comunicacion y el conocimiento interno de todas las areas. Se aprende a tratar la organizacion de manera total, tomando en cuenta el ambiente externo y su relacion con todas las piezas internas "deptos, gerencias etc.," aun cuando estas no sean mi responsabilidad directa. Fue muy interesante tener a SAPAL en blanco y negro en una hoja. Es una optica diferente del negocio que ayuda a reafirmar, o definir, el curso actual y futuro de la organizacion. Se encuentran consecuencias esperadas o aun mejor las inesperadas. Fue una experiencia positiva y gratificante desde el aspecto humano, tecnologico y organizacional. (Ernesto Enei, Gerente de Geo-Informatica, SAPAL (Sistema de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Leon)

Decision-making in our project-framing workshop was made clearer by considering strategic and non-technical issues. This allowed individuals of the multifunctional team to GRASP the process with a focused understanding, rather than only being activity driven. (T.H.van der Harst, organizer, project framing workshop, Shell International Exploration and Production)

In today's fast past, complex working environment, managers and leaders are constantly searching for means and road-tested intuitive tools that help them lead their organizations successfully. In this book, the authors provide these means through their tested concept "Managing From Clarity". This concept provides leaders with the ability to understand the dynamics that relate the business to their organization, communicate these understanding, and move the organization to different directions ensuring continued success. I had the opportunity to see the authors implementing some of their concepts and providing this clear added value to management. It is great that now these concepts and methodologies can be communicated, used and implemented through this new book. (Emad A. Elrafie, Ph.D., Executive Manager - Delta R)

To create value in the commodity metals industry, it is imperative that management create and recognize opportunities, appreciating the requirements of the stakeholders and pursuing them vigorously. It becomes really necessary to have a shared understanding of the contextual framework, based on systems thinking and the resource-based view. Managing for Clarity should be read by all managers involved in strategic planning. It makes my life easier. (Arturo Vaca, Director of Strategic Planning, Servicios Industriales Penoles)

From the Inside Flap:

In searching for the organizational 'magic' that makes some businesses thrive and other fail, management gurus, academic seers and business leaders strive to articulate a single reason for success. Managers are then faced with analyzing numerous findings and trying to integrate the best elements from each view that makes sense to them.

Managing from Clarity integrates the different views into one, streamlined structure which includes organizational as well as operational dynamics and moves it into the realm of strategic management. A host of tools and processes are presented, which offer leaders the means to make informed and deeply thought decisions on how best to balance multiple strategic issues. This books shows managers how to: Describe an individual's mental map of the world as a basis for decision-making

* Clearly articulate and map key relationships across the entire organization

* Describe the basis for developing a common, systemic platform for communication of strategic issues.

* Provide a rigorous and straightforward method for testing strategic hypotheses.

* Identify the essential strategic resources within a firm

and so harness the enormous potential for performance improvement that comes from integrating and aligning the mental methods of the individuals of the firm around the global goals of the organization.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0471497312
• ISBN 13: 9780471497318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275