All the Right Moves

I bought this book when it came out and thought it was excellent.I've recently gone back to it and hadn't realised just how influencing it had been in my thinking about business strategy and development.It should be seen as a classic business strategy text, at least in the "strategy as positioning" school. The fact that it isn't is due to one thing.It makes strategy sound too easy and logical and business books have to be sold on the idea that the contents are new and exciting.Can strategy really be captured in three big questions:1) Who are the customers you want to sell to?2) What products and services are you going to sell?3) How can you do it efficiently?Once you have your answers and you have implemented them into your business, it's important you don't stop and think "job done".It's vital you keep questioning the business. Things change as new positioning opportunities open up and existing opportunities either become too competitive or shrink.Customers' fundamental needs probably won't change but the priority of the choice criteria will. Products evolve technologically advanced do capabilities and processes. What was impossible becomes possible or even standard.The book is copyrighted in 2000 and Amazon indicate it was released in 1999.This inevitably means the examples are old, even though I can remember many of them. Strategy has also been forced to change and recognise the nature of markets. A book called"Your Strategy Needs A Strategy" by Martin Reeves helps you decide if this positioning approach is appropriate in your market. I think it is when you get away from the high tech, fast moving industries.Paul Simister is a business coach who helps business owners who are stuck, get unstuck.

I have a library full of strategy books, this one is the most practical I have ever read. It gives clear guidance which questions you need to answer to understand your current strategic position and how you need to evolve to continue to be successful. The book is so interesting I read it in record time and keep going back to it. Worth buying, studying and applying. Another equally valuable and rather similar in terms of framework is Lafley's "Playing to win" showing how P&G applied a similar model to turn back to growth.

Costas is superb. Excellent theory and practice combined. It is a must-read for strategists.

This book is a fantastic read and gives a fantastic insight into novel yet simple ways of approaching business and strategy. Far too often we get bamboozled with theory which is completely unrealistic and impossible to implement - Markides has done a tremendous job and this has helped me in positioning things to my customers and internal business units