Real Strategy by Ken Favaro

The Author

Ken Favaro specializes in working with CEOs, executive teams, and boards in three areas: strategy, innovation, and organization. He brings a clear-eyed perspective that’s been sharpened and honed from decades of fruitful and painful learning about how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Ken graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering (Phi Beta Kappa) and a Masters of Business Administration (Arjay Miller Scholar). He cut his teeth at Bain & Company and then spent the bulk of his consulting career at Marakon Associates during which he was CEO for six years. After Marakon, Ken joined Booz & Company (now Strategy& PwC) to lead its global strategy practice for six years.

At Booz, Ken co-developed a new approach to strategy and innovation that he now calls “Precedents Thinking.” He has co-taught variants of this approach as a guest instructor at both Columbia Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Ken is co-author of The Three Tensions, four feature articles in Harvard Business Review, and dozens of pieces for other publications.

ken@act2advice.com | Bronxville, NY

With real-world examples from businesses familiar to all, Ken Favaro tackles 65 of the most difficult questions about strategy, answering them with practical, concise guidance. Real Strategy is a powerful antidote to the competing definitions, baffling obfuscation, rampant jargon, and misguided “wisdom” that has neutered strategy.

PART I

What Is Strategy?

One day, a colleague and I were taking a break from our work on a strategy assignment for a client.

Suddenly, he blurted out "What is strategy, anyway?"

I don't remember my answer. It was decades ago. But I'll never forget the feeling that my answer could have been better.

Shumeet Banerji

Board Director, HP Inc., BBC,

Reliance Industries Limited,Founder and Managing Partner, Condorcet, LP, Former CEO, Booz & Company (now Strategy& PwC)

"Favaro’s refreshing book synthesizes lessons from his four-decade career as one of the great strategy advisors. He gives these lessons in the form of questions a CEO might be wondering about, and he answers every question clearly, concisely, and in plain English. His down-to-earth style delivers a karate chop to the solar plexus of most of the high-minded writing on strategy. The result is a highly readable guide—a major contribution to practical management advice on this crucial, much obfuscated subject. Every business leader should keep this book within reach!"

The Author

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