Blog Concept

"Strategy" - the key term in most management books - is a seductive word. From the Greek for "general," it conjures a picture of Alexander or Napoleon weighing the balance of forces, spotting a weak point, and delivering a startling masterstroke. If the global vision is right, we want to believe, execution of the merely "tactical" details can be left to lesser managers.

This is a blog for people who know better... who have seen too many promising strategies (others' and perhaps their own) go astray or come to nothing in execution. It argues that successful strategies always have an effective feedback loop from execution... that without constantly updated input from the organization's "hands" and "eyes," the strategist might as well be a brain in a box.

The uncomfortable truth is that with today's rapid business cycles and spiraling risks, no organization - no executive - can drive change with a crisp, simple "We are here... next year (or next decade) we must be there... and here are your marching orders." Wherever "there" is, it's a moving target. However up-do-date your map may be, new swamps and mountain passes will appear.

So what's the solution? Better business intelligence? A magic dashboard application that keeps the strategic planner up to date 24/7? This book argues that the answer lies in project management.

Project Management?!? We already have that! Scheduling and badgering people about task lists? Status reports about details that nobody understands?

No, not that Project Management- the real thing. Project Management that understands strategy and execution as not just inseparable, but as two views of a single dynamic reality; Project Management that steers both away from risk and towards opportunity; Project management that is adaptive to foster innovation rather than hampering it and is agile to keep pace with a turbulent world; Project Management that actually creates value.

Of course, you have heard of project management - you may even have done it once or twice. However, the profession of project management has been evolving for decades and now begs to be reconsidered as the core strategic discipline of execution.

Building on a four-year, multi-million-dollar study of project execution in more than 70 corporations, agencies and NGOs on five continents, this blog discusses how taking project management seriously and fitting it to organizational culture delivers both better day-to-day results and more long-term strategic value.

Project management, from this perspective, is strategy in real-time and when this is achieved, strategy begins to work.