Business Strategy Books Cont’d: Guest Post by Upstream’s Doug Weaver

4 May 2009 | Culture, Internet, Marketing, Media, Social Media | Comments

The story so far (skip this paragraph if you already know): Last week, Brian Reich threw down a challenge about all business strategy books sucking, to which I replied, set up the Twitter hashtag #bizstratbooks, and additionally asked a few friends who read everything to comment. The first respondent was Accuquote’s Sean Cheyney, and today we have a similar response from Upstream Group and Upstream Habitat CEO Doug Weaver:

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I’m afraid I would tend to agree with the underlying assertion.  Business strategy books do tend to suck for a couple of very logical reasons.  In order for a business book to sell well, it has to create the broadest possible audience and therefore (a) become intellectually accessible and (b) highly generalized in order to (c)reach a lowest common denominator readership that will pick it up at the airport bookstore.  It must also (d) be evergreen to preserve its shelf life, at the very time when business issues are highly time-sensitive and fluid.   Does this make business books worthless?  No, but it does challenge the reader to mine them quickly for nuggets of value and not look for overarching governing systems, as Brian Reich may have done.

There are two viable alternatives:  read lots of individual titles on the aspects of running a business (sales, operational excellence, finance, HR) and create your own strategic vision.   Or perhaps read history, architecture, individual struggle, politics and aim to bring a fresh perspective to the this whole ‘business strategy’ conversation, which frankly has become a  bit self-referential.

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More to come on this, and please join the party! Weigh in at will with comments and additions both here and on Twitter.

Note: @kedwardson (Twitter handle for Kip Edwardson) nominated Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You as a terrific business strategy book that isn’t REALLY a business strategy book. I agree, although I think that Johnson’s Mind Wide Open is even better.