June 2023

I received an advance copy of Strategy in the Digital Age from the publisher for free to be able to write this review.

In short, although compact (138 pages of text), Strategy in the Digital Age provides an excellent introduction to digital disruption and how to think strategically.

Strategy in the Digital Age is based on the MBA class the author teaches at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. It teaches how to develop strategy in light of the impact that digital technology has had on all industries. It does not teach the details of any given technology, nor does it provide step-by-step processes for performing key aspects of a digital transformation, rather it teaches how to think strategically about businesses, industries, and the changes necessary for success in the face of digital disruption.

Strategy in the Digital Age is especially well suited to those preparing to lead their organizations through a digital transformation. The book is divided into two parts. Part I is titled “What Impact Does Digital Transformation Have on the Nature of Competiton?” and Part II is titled “How Do I Digitally Transform My Organization To Flourish in the Digital Age?” In the closing chapter, the author lays out a 9 step roadmap for digital transformation.

Bottom line, Strategy in the Digital Age provides a powerful introduction to digital transformation through a strategic lens. It is a short book that focuses on the important decisions critical for success without getting bogged down in the specific (and always changing) details. Know who you are, decide who you want to become, hire great people, and decisively move forward in a manner consistent with your values. I recommend this book to leaders seeking to better understand either strategy or how technology is impacting all industries (or both).

Read my full review here.

Top firms like McKinsey work with clients across industries and around the world. While they do need to learn from clients about specifics for each engagement, they can also leverage their global learnings in helping other clients. REWIRED is a great example of that. Apparently the book is the actual workbook used by McKinsey teams when helping clients through digital transformations. It reflects what the firm has learned from helping many clients in many industries across many geographies through the same process. It captures best practices, watchouts, and key learnings and shares those in easy to reference materials that can be easily shared across client teams. Every chapter includes graphics (flowcharts, organization charts, structure tables, etc.) that crisply and clearly present key elements of what is being covered.

REWIRED is a guidebook to the very large and complex process of business transformation driven by digital advances. It has been developed specifically for the types of engagements where a firm like McKinsey will thrive — very complex change initiatives for very large companies that typically take years to complete and perfect. As a guide book, it will have value to companies just considering such a transformation effort, for those beginning that effort, and throughout the multi-quarter process.

The book is broken into seven sections. Six of the sections outline key elements of a transformation process and go into meaningful detail for the decisions required and the process for making those decisions. The seventh section provides three case studies of companies that have gone through such a transformation. Mini-case studies are also provided throughout the first six sections to provide real-world examples of how key decisions have been made and the resulting benefits.

In general, it is not helpful to read every word in the book from cover to cover. Someone considering such a transformation should read the introduction and first section to get a sense for how the effort would be structured and what the benefits would be, while skimming the chapter and section heads of the rest of the book to understand all the changes involved. At the beginning of the transformation journey, a leader should read section one, lightly read (skipping more detailed paragraphs) the next five sections to get a high level sense of the work involved, and then read section seven to learn from and be inspired by the three case studies. Each of the five middle sections should later be carefully and completely read as the transformation effort progresses and those issues are specifically being addressed.

Bottom line, REWIRED is an impressive book. It breaks down the overwhelming effort of transforming every aspect of how a large business operates in order to capture the competitive benefits of digital technologies into a large and structured collection of decisions and actions. It will be most useful for leaders who are hiring McKinsey to lead their organizations through such a transformation, but it will also be helpful to any leader wanting to get a glimpse of what it would take for their organization to be so transformed.

Read my full review here.

The Design of Business by Roger Martin is not an easy book to read. It does not provide quick and easy answers. It is the type of book that you read slowly so that you can absorb and comprehend what is being said and what it means in the real world. But it is a book that deals with important distinctions for businesses who are positioning for long term success.

The book teaches that design thinking is much more than following a specific methodology or using certain phrases or applying design thinking tools. It’s about finding the healthy balance between two opposing mindsets that are both critical for the long term success of a business. Managing that balance requires understanding those mindsets and so the bulk of the book (especially the first several chapters) force us to think differently and to learn the different ways that people approach problems and make decisions.

The first major concept that the author introduces is the Knowledge Funnel. In this conceptual model, we start with a “mystery”. This is often in the form of a question, like “I wonder how people want to buy hamburgers?” The first step down the Knowledge Funnel is often a “hunch”. You try something because you think it will work, even though you can’t verbalize why. The next step is a “heuristic” which the author defines as an “open-ended prompt”. It’s like a rule that usually works out (but not always). The next step is an “algorithm” which defines a sequence of steps that is guaranteed (absent any unusual circumstances) to produce the expected result. Finally, many algorithms (but far from all) are then implemented in software to make them as efficient as possible.

The second major concept is that there are generally two different approaches to making decisions. (I’m grossly oversimplifying this aspect of the book.) These two approaches are represented by a variety of different ways of characterizing how decisions are made. These various approaches largely overlap with each other (but not perfectly):

• Analytical vs. Intuitive
• Inductive or Deductive vs. Abductive
• Reliability vs. Validity
• Efficiency vs. Discovery
• Exploitation vs. Exploration

The business world generally favors the left side of each of these pairs because they want predictability and reliability. Because of that bias, business leaders make decisions based on analysis using either deductive logic (reasoning from the general to the specific) or inductive logic (reasoning from the specific to the general) because both of those approaches reliably predict the future from the past. This approach focuses on maximizing efficiency and exploiting the company’s established advantages.

Validity, in contrast to reliability, is focused on finding what is true rather than what is expected. This requires abductive logic that attempts to identify the answer that best fits what is known when existing models can’t explain it. This approach often requires an intuitive approach and often requires iterating through multiple trial-and-error hypotheses making the outcome timing and results unpredictable and uncertain. This is a process of exploration and discovery.

And to bring all of that back to the Knowledge Funnel, operating an identified algorithm or heuristic is a matter of efficiency (or exploitation) and relies on an analytical approach to decision making. But solving the mystery to create a heuristic, or to move from heuristic to algorithm is an exploration and discovery process that relies more on intuition and abductive logic.

Using the author’s terminology, for short term performance, businesses need to be great at efficiency. For long term survival they need to be great at discovery. Business leaders need to learn how to balance the two. This book explains how to do that (and no, there are no easy answers).

Bottom line, The Design of Business is a challenging book. It’s not for everyone. But for those willing to invest the time and effort to truly understand the concepts it teaches, the book provides a new way of looking at how businesses need to operate for both short term and long term success.

Read my full review of The Design of Business here.

Rick Boxx is an excellent teacher. I have been blessed by his teaching for over twenty years, whether in a classroom setting, through his daily e-mails, at conferences and events, or through his books. His business books are always excellent, well structured and practical, teaching how to apply timeless Biblical principles to contemporary business challenges. I was excited to receive a free copy of his brand new book at Unconventional Business Network’s recent annual national summit.

The Unconventional Leader is Rick’s first work of fiction, a leadership parable. Although I was excited to receive and read the book, my expectations were low. I’m generally not a fan of leadership parables. They tend to be neither good fiction, nor great business books. But The Unconventional Leader really impressed me. 

The Unconventional Leader draws you into a compelling story of four friends wrestling with believable workplace challenges to teach how the six principles in the Unconventional LEADER framework can lead to unparalleled success. The six principles are: Loyalty to God, Excellence from God, Appreciating and Respecting Others, Drive with a Higher Purpose, Ethics Beyond the Law, and Resolve and Courage.

The situations presented are all helpful. Several times I found myself thinking “that would never happen” but even then, the scenarios were simply contemporary issues taken to their natural extreme. Hopefully none of Rick’s readers will face all of the challenges Dan and his friends face, or even any of these challenges to the extreme that they do. However, the ways Rick presents these situations work well as an argument from the greater to the lesser. If Dan and his friends could deal with that extreme situation using Biblical principles, then readers can apply the same principles in their much lesser situation.

Bottom line, The Unconventional Leader is a fun and helpful book. It’s easy to read and will entertain you for an afternoon while teaching wisdom that can bless you for a lifetime. I strongly recommend The Unconventional Leader to anyone who is or hopes to be a leader in any organization.

Click here to read my full review.