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Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011).ISBN-10: 1857885597 ISBN-13: 978-1857885590Also see the Kindle edition (US). and Kindle edition (UK)We hear increasingly that "strategy" is irrelevant and that all we really need is better execution. I'm pretty sympathetic to the frustrations underlying that view, but the author of The Art of Action understands that strategy and execution are not separate domains. Stephen Bungay, who enjoys real credibility as a businessman (including 17 years with The Boston Consulting Group) and as a military historian (graduate work at Oxford and Tübingen) demonstrates a sophisticated grasp both of Clausewitz and Moltke's thinking and of how that thinking was reflected in practice by the German General Staff. Crucially, and unusually for writers who attempt to map the military domain to business, he genuinely understands that "business is not war." But it's still extremely relevant. Christopher Bassford
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Think about strategy and sharpen your judgment in an unpredictable environment. Carl von Clausewitz is widely acknowledged as one of the most important of the major strategic theorists; he's been read by Eisenhower, Patton, Kissinger, Chairman Mao, and many other leaders. In Clausewitz on Strategy, the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute has excerpted the passages most relevant to business strategy from Clausewitz's classic work On War. That famous book is the most general, applicable, and enduring work of strategy in the modern West: a source of insight into the nature of conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom. Clausewitz speaks the mind of the executive, revealing logic that those interested in strategic thinking and practice will find invaluable. He presents unique ideas, such as the idea that friction—the difference between what happens in plans and what happens in reality—is an intrinsic part of strategy. Clausewitz on Strategy offers Clausewitz's framework for self-education, a way to train the reader's strategic judgment.
THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP is one of the world's leading management consulting firms. Its clients include many of the world's industry leaders. TIHA VON GHYCZY is a faculty member at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He is a fellow of the BCG Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group. As a former partner of BCG, he was engaged in the practice groups for manufacturing/time-based competition and high technology. BOLKO VON OETINGER is a Senior Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group and Director of the firm's Strategy Institute. He is a member of BCG's Technology and Communications practice and has published many articles and several books on strategy and innovation. CHRISTOPHER BASSFORD is a former US Army artillery officer. He is presently Professor of Strategy at the National War College in Washington, DC, webmaster of The Clausewitz Homepage, and the author of several books, including Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) and The Spit-Shine Syndrome: Organizational Irrationality in the American Field Army(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). |
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CLAUSEWITZ.COM EDITORIAL: Clausewitz is frequently referred to within the context of business strategy. For example, Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel, Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management (New York: The Free Press, 1998) makes intelligent references to Clausewitz in six separate discussions. There are many other examples of business theorists drawing on Clausewitz, some interesting and insightful, others nonsensical. Some other relevant links are listed below. We don't normally comment on the validity of any particular reference, unless we are particularly impressed or provoked. While many writers say quite bluntly that "business is war," The Clausewitz Homepage takes the position that business is NOT war—not even metaphorically speaking. It's true that politics, business, and war belong to the same broad class of phenomena, and that there are events within business that correspond in significant ways to war. Indeed, wars have actually been waged at times by commercial corporations (think of the Hanseatic League or the East India Company) for essentially commercial objectives. For that matter, there have always been mercenary armies, which are essentially businesses that sell their military capabilities. But these are very specific instances of business and war occupying the same space at the same time. In general, just as war is a particular manifestation or subset of politics, business analogs to war are subsets of a larger phenomenon—thus, business as a whole is properly compared to politics, not war. On the other hand, we've known some business thinkers who reject the business/war analogy altogether, claiming that business is about the creation of value, whereas war is pure destruction. This idea, too, is, in our view, in error. War—at least, when it is pursued with sense and skill—is about the creation of political value. Thus politics may involve "creative destruction" in much the same manner as business obviously does. |
By Rob Robinson, http://www.wrrobinson.com/ A simple five and a half minute self paced presentation sharing a unique look at the principles of war derived from military theorist Clausewitz and how Clausewitz might apply those principles to the challenges of eDiscovery. Presented in a format based on reviewing nine accepted principles of war and applying them to eDiscovery. This site has adapted some text from The Clausewitz Homepage (though we haven't found an attribution yet... :-). The "Principles of War" it cites are not Clausewitz's, however, but, rather, one version of the classic principles of war that are generally considered to derive from the work of J.F.C. Fuller. Belisarius.com
"War, Chaos and Business" This is a business-oriented site devoted to promoting the ideas of air-combat theorist John Boyd, inventor of the famous (and very useful) OODA Loop. Visitors will be astounded, however, to discover the following:
Boyd's alleged superiority to Clausewitz is demonstrated on the following links: The Clausewitzian countercritique of Boyd would go something like this: BeMoreCreative.com Creativity-enhancing quotes from Clausewitz
"Waiting for our Clausewitz" — Originally posted Monday, April 28, 2003 Business As War by Fast Company. Business in the New Economy is a civilized version of war. Companies, not countries, are battlefield rivals.
"Before I took this analogy too far I wanted to start researching the works of Carl von Clausewitz and the interpretations of his works to see if I could find a theory that would server as an interesting foundation to my views on my own profession [IT]. I did find some interesting extensions of von Clausewitz's work that explained the usefulness of information in war, and how our current technologies fir into von Clausewitz's theories and observations. But I have yet been able to find a parallel between the thoughts and practices of individuals in Corporations as the new battle field of mankind." "If you are looking for power, this is the place to be. You have just entered the world of corporate power. On this site you will find the visions of two dozen students of the Erasmus University Rotterdam on how the theories of Carl von Clausewitz find their ways in modern society. The context in which these visions were written down is a project of the Rotterdam School of Management on power given by Dr. S. Magala. These visions are the result of the assignment to describe modern transformations of power and new power agencies on a global scale. The larger goal of the assignment was to answer the question about political, cultural and commercial mobilization: Napster, Seattle/Washington anti-IMF/WB/WTO demonstrations and European integration." (Papers are in Dutch.) Clausewitz and Electric Power (Link has recently broken)
"Changing the Game: Least-Cost Planning for Competition and the Environment" SimpelSystemsBV Our approach to the development of strategic management software is influenced by ancient theories developed by army generals like Sun Tzu and Von Clausewitz, but put into practice with the latest technology development.
Hartwick Humanities in Management Institute (HHMI) http://www.hartwickinstitute.org/
 Leadership Case Studies Clausewitz's On War Case Study: 2-225 (w/Teaching Note) The Historical Genesis of Modern Business and Military Strategy: 1850 - 1950
by Keith Hoskin, Richard Macve and John Stone UMIST, LSE and The University of Wales, Aberystwyth As submitted to Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, Manchester,7-9 July,1997
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