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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 46 – An Interview with David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 46 – An Interview with David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster explores the common errors made when executing time-honored strategic planning and business management practices and how to avoid these mistakes; subsequently improving management’s effectiveness and the organization’s bottom line. During our discussion, David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster and President of the Sonax Group, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • whether many time-honored business principles need to be changed or the way in which they are implemented needs improvement
  • the role of the mission statement and the qualities of a good mission statement
  • circumstances when consultants should be hired and the actions managers should take to ensure their consultants add real value
  • principles to follow when using forecasts as a planning tool
  • how to motivate prudent long-term risk-taking even at the realization of near-term costs
  • why there is no such thing as an IT project
  • what should be done to enhance the value of financial information such that it creates real, value-adding decision-making information for executives and managers

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights David shares in The Management Mythbuster and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.DavidAxson.com.   David’s book, The Management Mythbuster, can be purchased by clicking here.

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About the Author

David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster, is President of the Sonax Group, a business advisory firm. He is a former head of corporate planning at Bank of America and was a co-founder of The Hackett Group. He is a sought-after speaker and writer on business strategy and management and is widely regarded as a thought leader in the industry. To read David’s complete biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:56 — 48.0MB)

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Is Strategic Planning Still Relevant?

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In March 2010, Fast Company ran a piece entitled “Strategic Planning is Dead, Long Live Strategy Execution,” a few weeks earlier the Wall Street Journal declared that “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.” So is strategic planning another victim of the economic tsunami that has washed over the world?

It is easy to jump on the bandwagon and declare that in today’s volatile and uncertain world strategic planning is irrelevant. Amidst all the talk of flexibility, agility, speed and responsiveness, strategic planning seems oddly out of place. After all how useful can a long-term view of future be when our predictive ability is so poor?

However, before we discard strategy lets back up, maybe the problem is not strategic planning itself but the way in which we apply the technique. As Michael Porter author of numerous books that are essentials in the library of any strategic planner commented: “Strategy is a word that gets used in so many ways with so many meanings that it can end up being meaningless.”

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About the Author

David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster, is President of the Sonax Group, a business advisory firm. He is a former head of corporate planning at Bank of America and was a co-founder of The Hackett Group. He is a sought-after speaker and writer on business strategy and management and is widely regarded as a thought leader in the industry. To read David’s complete biography, click here.