A couple of weeks ago, I picked up Analysis Without Paralysis: 10 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions by Babette E. Bensoussan and Craig S. Fleisher for free in the Amazon Kindle Store. I’ll have to say that this read ended up being a classic case of “you get what you pay for.” I think that this book has been written about 100 times by just as many different authors restating many of the same ideas. There wasn’t anything really bad about this book, there just wasn’t anything all that good.
There were two things I did like about this book. The authors gave the organization freedom to fail…as long as they learned from it. And, there was a good focus on studying perception just as much as you study reality.
I only highlighted a few things while reading…and if you know me, that’s pretty rare as I really like to mark up my books. Below I’ve pasted what I highlighted while skimming this book…
- Winning strategies are based on originality and uniqueness—being “different” than competitors in ways that customers value.
- The output of any analysis should be actionable—that is, future-oriented—and should help decision makers to develop better competitive strategies and tactics.
- Competence is developed through making mistakes, practice, reflection, repetition, and training.
- Individuals frequently do analysis on the basis of the data they happen to have as opposed to the data they should have.
