Dr. Brown's thesis not only makes sense, but his identification of the "sense-making" processes that yield strategic decisions is profound, and it can be used both internally as a planning approach, and as a tool for competitive analysis. And he has the research to back up his insights. STS is truly an operating system for 21st century business. Jonathan Salem Baskin, author, Tell The Truth: Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, & Branding Only Works on Cattle Dr. Brown has accomplished a rare feat with his book-he has taken the overused and often misunderstood notion of organizational strategy and provided a clear and practical definition coupled with a pragmatic model grounded in systems thinking that offers a potential roadmap for firms to better leverage their organic capabilities and gain a competitive advantage in the business landscape. The book reads well and can be readily utilized by planners and leaders in today's workplace. Tim Goodly, PhD Senior Vice President Human Resources Fortune 100 Company Dr. Brown provides a very insightful analysis of what it takes to formulate a successful organizational strategy that ensures sustainable competitive advantage. The cornerstone of his reasoning is that much like other systems, strategy should take into consideration competitive, capabilities, and customer focused approaches toward strategy making and that can be only be fully realized through organizational sense-making processes. The "Systems Thinking Strategy" has many lessons to offer on strategy formulation for contemporary organizations. I recommend this as a "must read book" for all interested in organizational strategy formulation and practice. Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Professor of Organization Change PhD Program in Organization Development and Change Benedictine University

The rapid pace of technological innovation and the effects of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution have resulted in dramatic changes on a global scale, from the empowerment of the individual to the spawning of global markets. From the business perspective, the widespread deployment of Information Technology (IT) has resulted in many organisational changes and the development and use of new management and business processes. An important challenge for today's manufacturing organisations is to be able to anticipate the impact of investments in new (frequently IT-based) manufacturing technologies and programmes. Ideally, management needs to be able to identify and articulate the many ways in which investment decisions influence their organisation - in terms of performance across a range of measures. Furthermore, in today's manufacturing environment, it is increasingly necessary that a close relationship exists between manufacturing decision making and corporate business strategy, so that manufacturing decisions complement and are fully aligned with the organisation's strategic objectives.
Strategic Decision Making in Modern Manufacturing introduces and explains the AMBIT (Advanced Manufacturing Business ImplemenTation) approach, which has been developed to bridge the gap between strategic management considerations and the operational effects of technology investment decisions on the manufacturing organisation, so that the likely impact of new manufacturing technology and/or programme implementations can be evaluated, anticipated and accurately predicted. The AMBIT approach focuses specifically on the non-financial aspects of such investment decisions andoffers an approach that allows a manager, or more frequently a management team, to understand the impacts of a new technology or a new programme on the manufacturing organisation in terms of manufacturing performance.
The prediction of future trends and patterns is a very imprecise and ambiguous activity at the best of times. Yet despite such ambiguity, managers need to be forward looking. They need appropriate tools and approaches to help them anticipate the future. Thus, whilst the pages of organisational history may be filled with anecdotes about organisations that failed to "predict" the future, it is the challenge of today's organisations to evade such a fate. The AMBIT approach delineated in this book has been specifically developed to anticipate the future by analysing the impact of managerial decisions.

This fun, easy rock guitar method was designed specifically for kids, featuring cool riffs and licks in the style of some of today's hottest rock stars. It covers the fundamentals needed to get started - how to hold the guitar, basic left- and right-hand technique, tuning the guitar, music notation - and gets you jamming on simple rhythm and lead patterns.

Dr. Brown's thesis not only makes sense, but his identification of the "sense-making" processes that yield strategic decisions is profound, and it can be used both internally as a planning approach, and as a tool for competitive analysis. And he has the research to back up his insights. STS is truly an operating system for 21st century business. Jonathan Salem Baskin, author, Tell The Truth: Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, & Branding Only Works on Cattle Dr. Brown has accomplished a rare feat with his book-he has taken the overused and often misunderstood notion of organizational strategy and provided a clear and practical definition coupled with a pragmatic model grounded in systems thinking that offers a potential roadmap for firms to better leverage their organic capabilities and gain a competitive advantage in the business landscape. The book reads well and can be readily utilized by planners and leaders in today's workplace. Tim Goodly, PhD Senior Vice President Human Resources Fortune 100 Company Dr. Brown provides a very insightful analysis of what it takes to formulate a successful organizational strategy that ensures sustainable competitive advantage. The cornerstone of his reasoning is that much like other systems, strategy should take into consideration competitive, capabilities, and customer focused approaches toward strategy making and that can be only be fully realized through organizational sense-making processes. The "Systems Thinking Strategy" has many lessons to offer on strategy formulation for contemporary organizations. I recommend this as a "must read book" for all interested in organizational strategy formulation and practice. Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Professor of Organization Change PhD Program in Organization Development and Change Benedictine University

There is nothing most constant in business than change, and there are few things more challenging. The term change management is commonly used, but not universally understood. An operations person might think about shifts in the reporting structure and how that impacts who does what. An IT person is likely to think about tracking the modifications of code from one version of a software application to the next. An HR person is likely to think about the training and communication tasks that are required to enable the people in that organization to adopt the new processes and procedures for that change. All of these definitions can be useful at different times. Unfortunately, this diversity of meanings can also cause confusion and challenges. For starters, we often find two people may be using change related terms at the same time but not mean the same thing; and they may not even realize it. An example of this would be when the above mentioned HR and IT people talking to each other about the change plan. They may walk away from the conversations with completely different understandings of what was said, and end up taking different actions than the other expected. This can drive frustration and limit communication. Without good communication, we end up with scenarios where the various changes, or even individual parts of a large change, occur in a vacuum. This results in uncoordinated activities. Under the best of circumstances, a lack of coordination will result in duplicated and wasted efforts. In a worst case scenario, the results can mean confusion for employees, conflicting outcomes, and pretty much chaos. The best way to mitigate the risk of these challenges is to evolve how we think about change. Don't just think about change as a set of individual activities. Think about it in terms of the broader journey that the organization is on. Don't just talk about change management approaches that are limited in scope and finite in application, but focus on a holistic Journey Management approach that can address the full continuum of outcomes. At the simplest level, Journey Management is the process of assessing the impacts of major organizational changes, and actively managing those transitions so as to maximize positive results and minimize negative consequences. Journey Management is different from traditional change management is several key ways... While change management tends to be tactical and limited in vision, Journey Management is strategic and considers the whole enterprise While change management is reactive, Journey Management is proactive A guiding principle of Journey Management is to always link change to some desired performance outcomes. If a change can't be linked to some performance outcome then what is the point of doing it? This is not to say that Journey Management is about abandoning the valuable parts of traditional change management. Instead, it is more about expanding and integrating those efforts so that they are coordinated across the enterprise. We do this through five major five major activities: Awareness - Recognizing the need for change Planning - Setting up processes to make it successful Readiness - Preparing the organization, the systems AND the people Coordination - Integrating with other activities Execution - Following the plan, measuring the outcomes and adjusting if necessary By effectively executing these cycles we not only drive positive outcomes of the change at hand, but also instill a culture that allows our organizations to change more effectively over time. In today's ever evolving business environment, the ability to adapt and effectively change is the only truly sustainable strategic advantage.

Similar to works like Good to Great and In Search of Excellence, the book is an effort to express the findings of a rigorous scholarly study that looked at how to address deficiencies in the current strategic planning paradigms by applying a particular kind of strategic thinking known as systems theory to the strategic planning process. It not only describes the theoretical basis for this assertion but also reports real world data that demonstrates that many top performing organizations are already applying these kinds of mental models, even if they do not formally realize it.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!