The Critical Path

Building strategic performance through time

Kim Warren

Vola Press, UK

ISBN 0-9545328-0-5

The fundamental challenge facing business leaders is to drive performance into the future. To tackle it effectively, they need a clear understanding of what causes performance to improve or deteriorate over time and what power they have to change this trajectory for the better. Without such an understanding, they risk making poor choices about their future, either by failing to exploit promising opportunities or else by pursuing objectives they can never achieve.

The Critical Path sets the agenda for building business strategy. It seeks to provide managers with sound answers to three crucial questions:

• Why is our business performance following its current path?
• Where is it going if we carry on as we are?
• How can we design a robust strategy to transform this performance in the future?

Existing management tools and approaches offer little help with these issues. Here, we provide reliable, practical frameworks that combine to create a living picture of how an enterprise actually works. They show you how to find the levers that are under your control, and how to choose the right ones to accomplish your specific goals. They suggest how you can defeat competitors in your efforts to develop your future, and deal with the powerful external forces that can thwart your plans or work in your favour.

The Critical Path is the road your organization travels in order to build and sustain the resources and capabilities that will shape its future. This book provides a practical, in-depth guide to help you in this difficult but rewarding journey.

Read a review...

... a thoughtful resource-based approach to strategic management which should help everyone in an organization think about how his piece functions. Readers are encouraged to focus on organizational-wide challenges with long term implications and short term action imperatives. Each chapter builds on previous chapters, identifies and explains specific issues with graphics that clearly illustrate the issues, and often concludes with an action list. Kim effectively uses easy-to- understand diagrams based on strategy dynamics, a rigorous, fact-based method for analyzing business performance over time. He suggests that readers start with a critical measure that reflects the success or failure of their organization. For business Warren recommends starting with numbers that represent financial outcomes; for noncommercial settings, he suggests number of "beneficiaries served" for developing these time-based pictures of organizational challenges. Warren strongly advocates this approach for both commercial and noncommercial organizations, including volunteer groups, public agencies, and other service environments. Read the rull review by Karen Takel Quinn, PhD Review published in: FaultLine - A publication of the San Andreas Chapter Special Libraries Association, Volume 24, Number 3/4, January/April 2004

Contents

Introduction
Performance through time
Resources:  Vital drivers of performance
Resources and bathtub behaviour
Handling interdependence between resources
Building and managing the strategic architecture
You need quality resources as well as quantity
Managing rivalry for customers and other resources
Intangible resources and capabilities
Going forward

Kim Warren

Kim is a Teaching Fellow in Strategic Management at London Business School. In addition to teaching strategy dynamics on MBA and executive programs, he consults and coaches leadership teams in his approach. His work spans a wide range of sectors including governmental and voluntary bodies and professional organizations well as corporate settings such as oil and petrochemicals, banking, pharmaceuticals, and global IT services. He is also the author of Competitive Strategy Dynamics (John Wiley & Sons, 2002) and People Power (with Jeremy Kourdi, Vola Press, 2003).

VOLA Press

Vola Press was established by experts in business dynamics and strategy to publish books that help managers at every level make substantial - and sustainable - improvements in their business performance.