April 2014
Beginner
286 pages
7h 44m
English
Content preview from The New How [Paperback]Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Introduction: Why Strategies Fail
Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.
—
Before We Fix It, Let’s Understand Why It Fails
Watching a failed strategy rip through a company is akin to watching a powerful hurricane hit land and devastate everything in its path. Anyone who has witnessed such destruction hopes desperately to never experience such a thing again. When I witnessed it firsthand, I was working inside the third-largest software company in the world, where I managed revenues for the Americas region. I will tell you a story about my most dramatic experience of failed strategy. (Like all the stories in this book, it is a true story, but some identifying details have been changed to respect confidentiality. The exception is “Profile of a Collaborative Leader” in Chapter 3, in which Hans Grande’s real name is used.)
My role had a broad charter to work on product issues, sales compensation plans, marketing, and channel decisions—everything about setting and meeting revenue goals. It gave me a perfect vantage point to watch the events unfold. Unfortunately, I wasn’t an innocent bystander; I was complicit in what went down.
It started innocently enough. My boss stopped by my office, excited, with big news: the company had decided to diversify our product line six-fold within the coming 18 months.
The story she told had all the makings of a legend. The CEO had just shared the results of recent market exploration, which had convinced him that this strategic ...
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.