Don Bowers, Former CEO, Makino, Inc.

Strategic Management Simplified is a handbook that is designed to help the reader achieve a critical balance so rare in business keeping your actions tied to your strategy, making decisions with a reasonable amount of assessment, and doing both in a real time way which allows you to adjust to changing business conditions.

The author uses the term strategic management versus strategic planning because the term plan implies a static (or point in time) exercise, while the term management suggests interaction and responsiveness to dynamic context. All kinds of plans can be developed to lead action, but they should be based on a strategy for the organization. The challenge is to actually manage the organization's strategy over time and to think strategically as you are doing it.

This book provides an overview of the management policies and culture necessary for sound strategic planning to flourish in any organization and goes on to offer practical steps on how to create and implement:

• A strategic statement which can guide your organization's resource allocation decisions.
• A strategic management system which allows you and your staff to change your strategic statement over time as you challenge the assumptions upon which it is based.