Validating Strategies: Linking Projects and Results to Uses and Benefits - Hardcover

'At last a coherent approach to strategy that emphasises rationality and action above form and analysis without action. Strategy has to deal with complexity and Phil Driver has managed to develop a methodology where strategy formulation recognises the complexity, diversity and multiple stakeholder interests typical in the process. This book is a must-read for all those who wish to formulate and implement a working strategy.'Piet Beukman, Director, Engineering Management Programme, University of Canterbury, New Zealand'OpenStrategy provided a valuable input to the development of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy by providing a consistent framework that facilitated input from geographically dispersed stakeholders with divergent perspectives. It is timely that Phil has documented this systematic framework to collaborative strategy development and implementation so that the approach is accessible to those grappling with the need for strategies to address complex issues with multiple stakeholders.'Dr Bryan Jenkins, Professor, Strategic Water Management, University of Canterbury and Lincoln University, UK'Strategic information must be well managed if it is to have an impact. Validating Strategies provides an enlightening diagnosis of failures of current strategic information systems by demonstrating the importance of effective taxonomy, syntax and semantics of strategic information. This book then outlines the powerful yet linguistically simple OpenStrategies system for collaboratively developing, validating and implementing strategies in complex environments.'Prof. Dr. Simone Fuhles-Ubach, Dean of the Faculty for Information and Communication Studies, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Organisations continue to struggle with their strategies; even when they have a strategy development process, their plans rarely have the impact that was intended. Too many of their people don't know about the strategy, don't understand it or can't translate it into what it means for their role. Validating Strategies addresses the taxonomy, syntax and semantics of strategies; in other words: what does the strategy say, how does it relate to other plans, what are the causalities between the strategy and successful business outcomes and how should this all be expressed in a language that everyone in the organization can understand. The model at the heart of this book - Organisations run Projects that produce Results and enable people to Use them to create Benefits (PRUB) - offers an intuitive approach that links collaborative strategic planning and validation to project and programme management so as to create, validate and implement strategies. The strategy development and validation model offered by Phil Driver addresses the struggle of organisations to realise their strategy, replacing endless projects that don't quite seem to deliver what the organization needs with an easy-to-understand, implementable methodology that can be validated with evidence.