David Maister's Strategy & The Fat Smoker

Occupational hazard, I suppose, but I read a fair number of business books.

I tend to avoid the purely theoretical and academic ones. They're easy enough to spot: the titles aren't that catchy and they contain text-booky things that look like IS/LM curves.

I'm also not wild about the "here-are-ten-thinly-disguised-case-studies-from-my-consulting-practice-that-my-assistant-has-strung-together," which I may get conned into picking up by a reasonably catchy title. Not that it matters, but when the true company names are masked, I always spend my time trying to figure out if Deutsche Motors is BMW or Mercedes. (And I don't cheat by looking at the author's bio to find out that "Mr. Blow's clients include Bank of America, Monsanto, and BMW, among others.") And since the examples tend to be mega-firms, while I tend to be working in and for mini-firms, I have a hard time identifying with the problems or the solutions to begin with.

I also hate the clever, skinny little big type books - "Toe Nail Clippers and the Art of Management" - that seem designed as credibility boosters and handouts that get tacked on to the bill for the big off-site that the consultant runs.

On title alone, David Maister's Strategy and the Fat Smoker might sound like it would fall into this latter category, but that's not the case at all.

Instead, it's a very interesting and insightful approach to "the strategy question", one that draws on Maister's personal and professional experience and includes a few real, live actual tools that people can apply to help ensure that their strategy will work (e.g., tools for defining yourself as a manager, and tools for deciding the attributes you want and need in an executive).

For starters, Maister's title is derived from his decision - forced on him by companion health problems - to lose weight and give up smoking. While he doesn't advocate that a company wait until it's in jeopardy to do something about its ill health, hey, it happens. The point Maister makes is that successfully implementing a strategy, like getting and staying healthy, depends on a permanent commitment to a lifestyle change.

If you're not willing to make the lifestyle change, Maister writes, "there is no shame in aiming for competence if you are unwilling to pay the price for excellence.  But don't try to mislead clients, staff, colleagues or yourself." (Maister works with professional services organizations, and Fat Smoker is aimed primarily at them. Most of the material, however, can be generalized across other types of business.)

Maister devotes part of the book to the importance of saying "no". Having lived through this many times, I know first hand that some people balk at the notion of any strategy that seems to limit opportunity.  Thus, you find that people stay "on strategy" some of the time, while at the same time being perpetually willing to veer off course when there's a big deal, or a name brand prospect, or some other glittery, distracting object on a nearby path. Not the way to succeed. Sticking with a sound strategy may seem limiting, but it's actually liberating.

There's also some very good advice on setting up a binding set of rules that apply to your strategy - what you will and won't do. If you can't come up with a rule set that you're willing to be governed by, well, guess what? You don't got no strategy, because "strategy is a set of rules and guidelines that tell you how to go about making decisions."

Precisely.

There are a few really wonderful stories in this book. My favorite is one in which Maister recounts how a senior faculty member at the Harvard Business School helped Maister out when he was embarking on his teaching and research career there. (Reading about the deft and graceful way in which this professor mentored Maister - and trying to figure out how to apply this approach to helping new and more junior employees in your company, or anyone in your life you're trying to mentor - is worth the price of the book.)

You'd think after all these years, and after all the books on the subject that have been written, that companies would finally get the importance of not only establishing a strategy, but making a real commitment to executing the strategy. But as Maister points out, coming up with the strategy is easy; actually doing something about it is hard.

So why do companies keep making the same mistakes?

Well, David Maister is a businessman, not a shrink, and he doesn't have the answer any more than I do.

But, God knows, I've worked for enough places where we had a nominal strategy that everyone gave lip service to, but which did not connect in any way shape or form to what we were actually doing on a day to day basis.  And while sticking to a strategy might be hard, it's not so damned easy being unsuccessful, either.

I guess if everyone figured it out, there'd be no winners and losers, and that would be no fun.

Anyway, lots of kernels of wisdom contained in David Maister's book, and some nice little how-too freebies as well.

If 2008 is finally going to be the year that your fat smoker of a company is going to do something about its bad habits, this would be a pretty good book to read.