Dealing with Dilemmas: Where Business Analytics Fall Short

Dealing with Dilemmas: Where Business Analytics Fall Short

by Frank Buytendijk
Released August 2010
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9780470630310

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Book description

Observing how business management is obsessed with analysis and numbers, Dealing with Dilemmas shows there is an entire class of problems that cannot be solved by analysis: business dilemmas. Dilemmas, representing a large part of strategic decision-making, require the opposite approach of analysis; synthesis. Dealing with Dilemmas shows how popular performance management methodologies can be used in new and previously unexplored ways. It authoritatively shows you how your business can move forward strategically in ways previously impossible.

  • Shows dangers in current thinking around analytics and performance management

  • Includes practical case examples and interviews with C-level executives and government officials world-wide, both in commercial enterprise and public sector

  • Makes the most nebulous of management processes, strategy formulation, insightful and links it tightly to strategy execution and performance management.

Filled with case studies and examples, this book reveals how your business can start solving dilemmas and move forward strategically.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Foreword
  3. Preface
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. 1. What Is the Problem?
    1. 1.1. What Is a Dilemma?
    2. 1.2. A Short Overview of History
  6. 2. Strategy Is about Making Choices, or Is It?
    1. 2.1. What Is Strategy?
    2. 2.2. Strategy Content
    3. 2.3. Strategy Process
    4. 2.4. Strategy Context
    5. 2.5. Make the Choices that Create Options
  7. 3. All Kinds of Dilemmas, but Just a Few Types
    1. 3.1. Identifying Dilemmas Using the Balanced Scorecard
    2. 3.2. Value or Profit?
    3. 3.3. Long Term or Short Term?
    4. 3.4. Top Down or Bottom Up?
    5. 3.5. Inside Out or Outside In?
    6. 3.6. Optimize or Innovate?
    7. 3.7. Listen or Lead?
    8. 3.8. Two Types
  8. 4. The Strategy Elastic
    1. 4.1. Strategic Bias
    2. 4.2. Neutral Zone
    3. 4.3. Strategically Stuck
    4. 4.4. Strategic Stretch
    5. 4.5. Strategy Elastic
    6. 4.6. Profiles in Performance
    7. 4.7. Time to Look in the Mirror
    8. 4.8. Misalignment
  9. 5. Dealing with Dilemmas, or Not?
    1. 5.1. How Not to Deal with Dilemmas
    2. 5.2. How to Deal with Dilemmas: Either/Or
    3. 5.3. How to Deal with Dilemmas: And/And
    4. 5.4. The Right Mindset
    5. 5.5. Dealing with Dilemmas Roadmap
  10. 6. To Decide or Not to Decide, That Is the Question
    1. 6.1. The Eye of Ambiguity
    2. 6.2. A Few Examples
  11. 7. This and That
    1. 7.1. Many of These versus Many of Those
    2. 7.2. Lifting the Constraints
    3. 7.3. Efficient Frontiers
    4. 7.4. One Big This versus One Big That
    5. 7.5. Cost Cutting
    6. 7.6. Improvement of Return
    7. 7.7. One Big This or One Big That: Round Two
  12. 8. You and Me
    1. 8.1. Morality and Ethics
    2. 8.2. Three Elements to Resolve You-and-Me Dilemmas
      1. 8.2.1. Examine Your Motives
      2. 8.2.2. Communicate
      3. 8.2.3. Reconcile the Dilemma
    3. 8.3. A Structured Approach
    4. 8.4. Top Down and Bottom Up
    5. 8.5. Value and Profit
  13. 9. Now and Later
    1. 9.1. Long Term and Short Term
    2. 9.2. Listen and Lead, Optimize and Innovate
    3. 9.3. Scenario Planning: Seeing What Others Do Not See
    4. 9.4. Scenario-Based Strategy Maps
    5. 9.5. Case Study: Tier 1 Talent
  14. 10. Increasing the Stakes
    1. 10.1. Interorganizational Dilemmas
    2. 10.2. Stakeholder Alignment Map
    3. 10.3. Conclusion
  15. 11. Closing Thoughts
    1. 11.1. Meta-Synthesis
    2. 11.2. Relationships, Human Behavior, and Culture
  16. A. Company Profiles
    1. A.1. Achmea (Europe)
    2. A.2. Cox Communications (United States)
    3. A.3. Global Soft Commodities Singapore (Anonymized, Singapore)
    4. A.4. Publishing Corp. (Anonymized, English-Speaking Country)
    5. A.5. National Central Bank (Anonymized, Europe)
    6. A.6. Novozymes (Denmark)
    7. A.7. Polycom (United States)
    8. A.8. Vopak (Netherlands)
    9. A.9. Dick Berlijn (Netherlands)
    10. A.10. Nirmal Singh Hansra (Australia)
    11. A.11. Dr. Edmund Stoiber (Germany)
  17. Notes
    1. Chapter 1
    2. Chapter 2
    3. Chapter 3
    4. Chapter 5
    5. Chapter 6
    6. Chapter 7
    7. Chapter 8
    8. Chapter 9
    9. Chapter 10
  18. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Dealing with Dilemmas: Where Business Analytics Fall Short
  • Author(s): Frank Buytendijk
  • Release date: August 2010
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470630310