Who Changed My Strategy

Management by bestselling book

The Art of War, Wareham’s Way, Walt Disney, Minding the Store were just some of the many business books our father would read, highlight, underline and make notes in the margins. In our regular family meeting my father was yet again changing the strategy up. But we were used to it by now. Change was becoming “strategy of the month club”, an almost monthly occurrence in our family business. It got to the point where we would sneak into his office to see what the newest business book he was reading to prepare for the next wave of change.

Many businesses are guilty of being complacent and slow to accept change. What happens when the opposite occurs, and you change too much? That’s what happened in our family business. My father was big on keeping up with the most recent business trends. Mostly through reading several business books a week, but also having lunch with academics at a nearby business school and attending seminars and conferences. He would pass out the best of these books and share the conversations to the rest of the family to help get us more into strategic planning.

He was a true leader, visionary, having extracted himself from the day-to-day operations he found himself engrossed in business strategy. The problem was the rest of the family members were still wrapped up in the day-to-day operations and had little time to spend on strategic planning. 

To my father’s credit he continuously pulled the business forward, trying new strategies and keeping an eye on the competition. But for the rest of the family, it was stressful and overwhelming to keep switching priorities and learn new strategy while immersed in the daily operations. My father was easily influenced by business book authors and the strategy would shift as he read each book. Sometimes it felt like a dart board and throwing new strategies up on the wall to see if they would stick. 

Along the way we formed an effective board who helped filter and validate the strategies. Later it would prove successful by helping us to grow more rapidly and keep our competitive market position. We were a survivor at a time of consolidation in our industry. Rather than being acquired by another business, we became an acquirer of other businesses. But we would never have been in that position if my father hadn’t pushed so hard.

Funny thing, with all the bestselling business books he read, he never read the all-time bestseller “Who Moved My Cheese?”