Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company's Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy

(Hardback)

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In thirty years of working in corporations, Michael Beer has witnessed how organisational silence has derailed many a strategic objective. When lower-level employees in the organisation can't speak truth to power, senior leaders don't hear what they need to hear about their firm's fitness to compete. Employees lose trust in higher-ups and become more resistant to change.

In Fit to Compete, Beer presents an antidote to silence an innovative and highly effective process for holding honest conversations with everyone in your organization. Used by over 150 organisations across the globe, the Strategic Fitness Process has helped leaders in industries as diverse as medical technology, restaurant chains, and pharmaceuticals hear the raw and necessary truth about the sources of misalignment between their strategies and their organisations.

In addition to a step-by-step guide, Beer offers detailed and illustrative case studies of companies that have used the Strategic Fitness Process to great effect. He also shows how to apply the process more broadly, to a variety of strategic challenges and at multiple levels throughout the organisation.

Reviews

Advance Praise for Fit to Compete:

"Fit to Compete is a survival manual for every leader who has struggled to create real change in an organization. Michael Beer offers a powerful tool--the strategic fitness process--that enables leaders to successfully implement their strategies and, in the process, transform their organization's culture and their own ability to lead." -- Teresa Amabile, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School; coauthor, The Progress Principle

"Michael Beer has crafted a brilliantly simple process to help organizations honestly cut through the challenges of the day and advance their strategies in enlightened and impactful ways." -- Douglas R. Conant, founder, ConantLeadership; former President and CEO, Campbell Soup Company; and former Chairman, Avon Products

"Many firms are stuck--strategically and organizationally--because no one will speak truth to power. In this hugely important book, Professor Michael Beer lays out how to structure a process to make these conversations happen and details the often-astounding results that flow from putting them in place." -- Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University

"Before becoming CEO, I spent four months asking questions and listening to workers, middle-level managers, customers, and suppliers to try to learn the truth about the company. Few CEOs have this luxury. But Michael Beer's strategic fitness process shows you how to find truth in a way that not only works but also builds trust and institutional knowledge. It would have been hugely valuable if I had the method and wisdom in this book at the time I took over as CEO." -- Richard Gochnauer, former President and CEO, United Stationers

Author Bio

Michael Beer is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He is a cofounder and Chairman of TruePoint Partners, an international consulting firm, and chairman of the board at the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of companies and leaders committed to creating economic and social value. He is the author of eleven books, including Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

You can find the author at: truepoint.com/who-we-are/our-people/michael-beer/