Description
This book offers a practical, fact-based approach to explain how enterprises deliver performance over time. Rigorous methods explain how to quantify the growth, decline and interdependence within the organisation’s resources and capabilities as well as the continuous interactions with competitors and other external factors. These methods create clear and practical pictures of the strategic architecture driving earnings and other performance outcomes, not just for commercial firms, but for non-profit cases too. Management is then well-equipped to answer three crucial questions in their strategy development : why has the business performed as it has to date? where is performance headed in the future if we carry on as now? and how can we alter this future for the better? The book provides the basis for an entire course on the time-based perspective on competitive strategy, connecting strongly to established static frameworks. Alternatively it offers a vital missing component for existing courses in strategy and general management, as well as a key reference text for professionals in corporate development, consulting and business analysis.
Rebecca began her career as a strategy consultant at Monitor Company, honed her skills as a systems thinking facilitator at GKA Inc, worked as VP of Affordable Housing Acquisitions for Boston Financial, and built her own Systems Thinking consultancy through which she was a key contributor to the ReThink Health Initiative, Climate Interactive’s Agritopia, and Dialogos’ work for the US Forestry Service. She has spent more than 25 years supporting corporate and philanthropic clients including Vistaprint, Elizabeth Dole Foundation, AT&T, Ford, Smithkline Beecham, Shell, Amoco, and USDA. Her expertise is using collaborative causal mapping and System Dynamics simulation models to help multi-sector collaboratives think together better. Rebecca trained in Systems Dynamics in Jay Forrester’s Pre-College Education Project and John Sterman’s class while pursuing a BS in Civil Engineering and an MBA from MIT. She has served on the Society Policy Council and been a guest lecturer at MIT, Wharton, Dartmouth, and Brown. When not working as a systems thinking evangelist, Rebecca loves to travel the world. Pre-covid travels included Mexico, Chile, Morocco, Brazil, Uganda and Iceland to spend time with school children, whale sharks, camels, street art, gorillas and waterfalls. When stuck at home, she enjoys gardening, swimming, dancing, and renovating properties.