Strategic Conversations
Creating and Directing the Entrepreneurial Workforce

Accessible and practical book providing a guide for building entrepreneurial workforces through carefully designed strategic conversations between management and employees.

J.-C. Spender (Author), Bruce A. Strong (Author)

9781107621176, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 May 2014

253 pages, 15 b/w illus. 2 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.41 kg

'To innovate its business model, the World Bank is increasingly engaging its partners and clients in strategic conversations. This act of co-creation is imperative for keeping the Bank focused on achieving its goals and fulfilling its mission.' Klaus Tilmes, Vice President, Financial and Private Sector Development, World Bank

Most organizations fail to take full advantage of their employees' knowledge, initiative, and imagination. In this accessible and practical book, J.-C. Spender and Bruce Strong provide a guide for building entrepreneurial workforces through carefully designed conversations between management and employees. These 'strategic conversations' make employees partners in the strategy development process, engaging them to help shape the organization's future. The result is transformational: instead of strategy being a dry, periodic planning exercise for the few, it becomes a dynamic and continuous act of co-creation enriched by the many. Case studies illustrate how leading organizations have used strategic conversations to build sustained competitive advantage, create innovative business models, make better decisions under uncertainty, reduce the need for change management, and enhance employee engagement. The book will appeal to managers, entrepreneurs of all stripes, and teachers and students in schools of business and public administration.

Preface
1. Introduction - what are strategic conversations?
2. The strategic conversations imperative
3. Strategic conversations in the wild
4. Engaging employees in management's agenda
5. Strategizing and the leaders' role
6. Putting strategic conversations into practice - innovation communities
7. Conversation trumps structure - new norms for dialog
8. Strategic conversations across geographies, generations, and the multitude
9. Engaging the world outside in the conversation
10. Creating a self-reinforcing innovation platform - collateral benefits
11. Measuring the future
12. Epilogue - on managing
Further reading
Index.

Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship [KJH]