The Living Strategy - Back cover:

"A growing number of managers around the world have come to recognize that human capital is rapidly replacing physical and financial capital as the key source of competitive advantage. The challenge is to come to grips with the "how to"s" of linking their people strategy with their business strategy. Conceptually robust, yet highly practical, Professor Gratton"s book will be extremely useful in establishing this link."Sumantra Ghoshal, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership, London Business School

"Gratton"s thoughtful and creative work breathes life into the role of people in organizations. It helps executives clearly see why people matter and how to create organizations that accomplish both people and organizational goals. Gratton has been a thought leader in the people (HR) profession for years; this work now shows all managers how to better understand and use people. The book will become a classic for HR professionals and a toolkit for line managers."David Ulrich, Professor of Business, University of Michigan

Money used to buy you market share, technology used to bring you competitive advantage. Now even 23 year olds can raise a million dollars and technology is imitated in months. So what"s the next great frontier of advantage for businesses? The people who live there. Only people can turn strategy into living, breathing purpose. In this ground-breaking book, Lynda Gratton shares for the first time the "why" and "how" of putting people at the heart of corporate strategy. If companies want to increase their business performance, they need to recognize and develop the soul of the organization: they need a Living Strategy.

Inside front flap:"If "people are our greatest assets", it"s time to make strategies that people can live in. Living Strategy is the book that puts the human in human capital."- Lynda Gratton"People are our most important asset", "We are a knowledge based company", "All we have is our people". These are statements that we hear ever more frequently, from more and more companies. Yet, for too many of the people who populate our companies, the reality of organizational life is that people do not feel they are treated as the most important assets and they do not feel their knowledge is understood or used.The only route to improved performance is by placing your human resource at the centre of your strategic decision-making. Living Strategy shows you why and how to design strategies that have meaning and purpose for people, without whose commitment they remain drawings on the board-room wall chart. It argues that a new management agenda is crucial and shares the three tenets of human organizational behaviour. The six step Living Strategy journey guides the reader through the implementation of a strategy which will not only grow your organization, but create a business of which you can be proud.For corporate strategy to live and work, people have to understand strategy, and strategy makers have to understand people. Inside back flap:Professor Lynda Gratton is a global authority on the people implications of strategy and Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. She writes, teaches and consults across the world on human resource strategy. At London Business School she is Dean of the MBA Programme and Director of the Executive programme "Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Organisations. Since 1992, Lynda has directed the Leading Edge Research Consortium in partnership with companies such as Hewlett Packard, Glaxo Wellcome and Citibank. Reflections on these companies formed the framework for Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality" published by Oxford University Press in 1999.Lynda has profoundly influenced the way managers think about human resource strategy. She consults actively to some of the world"s largest companies and has trained managers all over the world in her "Living Strategy" process.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 2 Ratings

"People are at the centre of business success" - 2000-07-06
Reviewer Rating:
"My purpose...is simple: to share with you the experiences of three companies (HP, Glaxo Wellcome, and Motorola) and to review the wider body of research which together have convinced me of the prime role of people in organizational success. But that only raises the 'so what' question...so what if people are at the centre of organizational success? I believe that putting people at the heart of organizational success has implications on 'how we think' about organizations and 'what we do' within them. The first part of this book addresses the question of how we think about organizations if we put people at the heart of corporate purpose. For me it raises three basic tenets of being human: we operate in time, we search for meaning, and we have a soul. With this comes a set of nine organizational and managerial capabilities that support these tenets. The second part of the book addresses the question of what we can do to create living strategies that place people at the centre. Over the years I have refined a six-step process that puts people at the heart of corporate success. This, together with the workbook that follows, provides a frame for you to move from this as rhetoric to action-based reality" (pp.3-4).

In this context, Lynda Gratton firsty introduces the three tenets and the nine capabilities of new agenda as follows:

I. First tenet: we operate in time

* Past beliefs, hopes and commitments influence our current behavior: the 'memory of the past'.

* Current behavior is influenced by beliefs about what will happen in the future: the 'memory of the future'.

* Skills and knowledge take many years to develop.

* Human development progresses through a shared sequence.

* Attitudes and values are resistant to rapid change.

Capabilities:

1. Build visionary capabilities.

2. Develop scanning capabilities.

3. Create strategic capabilities.

II. Second tenet: we search for meaning

* We strive to interpret the clues and events around us, we actively engage with the world to seek a sense of meaning, to understand who we are and what we can contribute.

* Symbols, which may be events or artefacts are important in creating a sense of meaning.

* Over time groups of people create collective viewpoints, a sense of shared meaning.

Capabilities:

4. Develop diagnostic capabilities.

5. Create systemic capabilities.

6. Build adaptive capabilities.

III. Third tenet: we have a soul

* Each of us has a deep sense of personal identity of what we are, and of what we believe in.

* We can trust and feel inspired by our work-and when we do we are more creative.

* We can dream about possibilities and events.

* We can choose to give or withold our knowledge-depending on how we feel.

Capabilities:

7. Develop emotional capabilities.

8. Create trust-building capabilities.

9. Capability to build the psychological contract.

According to Lynda Gratton, to understand 'how' of putting people at the centre of corporate strategy, firstly we must understand 'why' this is crucial. Therefore, at the first stage she explores these tenets and capabilites as briefly mentioned above (more detailed discussion see Part II pp.25-94). At the next stage,to create a living strategy she developes a six-step process (build a guiding coalition, imagine the future, understand current capability and identify the gap, map the system, model the dynamics, and bridge into action) which goes from building commitment to moving into action (more detailed discussion see Part III pp.97-210). Finally, she presents a workbook to provide an opportunity to consider the philosophy and practice of a living strategy (see Part IV pp.213-229).

Highy recommended.

What % of people in your organisation really feel inspired? - 2001-06-12
Reviewer Rating:
Ask the question above to managers of an organization and the answer will be "about 15%". According to a study by Lynda Gratton, Author of "Living Strategy", many of us are working in companies where neither our colleagues nor we feel inspired. A 1996 study showed that the percentage ranged between 19 and 8% for companies such as HP, GlaxoWellcome, Citibank, ... Similarly, less than 20% of people feels that the top management is well informed about what people at lower levels think and do. Answers to other questions are better but still: When questioned on integrity, 70% people at the best company of the tested group believed their employer has high integrity, whereas this figure dropped to less than 35% an the least "integer" company of this leading edge research consortium. It's the author's aim to create inspirational companies, which build hope, trust and excitement. When you see the figures above, this clearly is needed. In fact, I discoveed this book when a customer asked me to help them to work on their "integrity".

The least this book will do is serve as an eye-opener. Given what I came accross in companies, that by itself is already important. I have to agree with the author that very few companies understand the relationship between increases in revenue and employee emotions.

The approach the author presents for "tackling" this enormous task clearly has its advantages over "older" models of managing human resources. However, I recommend to complement this book with messages you'll find in Peter Block's "Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion" and in David Cooperrider's "Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking Human Organization". In these 2 books you'll find inspiration for better ways of implementing the path Lynda Gratton shows us. For that reason, my rating is limited to 4 stars. Still, you need to buy it to understand the "Why" of the path and to have an additional "drawing".

Anyway, start putting people at the heart of corporate purpose!

This review was written for the 7EQ.com Newsletter (Vol.4,n++4). Patrick Merlevede is co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

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