If you aren’t sure about Stevens’ far-out scheme, maybe you’d like some more traditional advice. Brian Tracy has years of experience as a strategist with over 500 companies worldwide. The short, intense chapters of his new book, Turbostrategy, quickly get to the point: Figure out what’s working and do more of it. Find out what’s not working and stop doing it.
It’s tough to put the brakes on a product or person that you love, but for the sake of profits, Tracy says, you gotta do what you gotta do. That’s the basis of “zero-based thinking” instead of struggling to fix, change or improve, you throw in the towel. The elegant simplicity of this strategy is what makes it so appealing. Why shouldn’t work be less work? Companies that have the guts to take an honest look at their products, customers and vendors and fire some of them will reap the rewards.
Tracy’s advice is geared to senior managers and CEOs, the folks with the decision power to make big changes (and the people most likely to attend his seminars), but anyone striving for a fast, flexible organization or career will appreciate this book.
