Battling for Competitive Advantage

Product Description

Praise for Battling for Competitive Advantage

"[Battling for Competitive Advantage] systematically unravels and explains the complexities of modern business and warfare. This excellent book will prove helpful to business leaders as well as the academic community charged with explaining successful leadership of large organizations."
-General Barry R. McCaffrey, U.S.A. (Ret.), Professor of International Security Studies at West Point and NBC News Commentator

"Colonel Ken Allard doesn't just have supreme military intelligence, his operational brilliance extends to the business world as well. Battling for Competitive Advantage teaches you that business is war and that Ken is the perfect commander-in-chief to follow into your business battles."
-Ron Insana, Coanchor, CNBC's Business Center

"In war, they don't give out medals for second place. In business, as in war, you can't win without first surviving. [This book] offers the hard-won wisdom from one warrior's world to another. Read, laugh, squirm, survive, and win!"
-Scott A. Snook, Associate Professor, Organizational Behavior Harvard Business School

"In the post-9/11, post-Enron environment, Ken Allard's Ten Commandments of Military Leadership are directly applicable to today's business CEOs."
-Tom Petrie, Chairman and CEO, Petrie Parkman & Co.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #692289 in Books
* Published on: 2003-12-26
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Hardcover
* 240 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The author, a former army colonel currently featured as a military analyst on MSNBC and NBC News, is convinced that corporate America can learn vital lessons from the U.S. military. Business executives, according to Allard (Command, Control and the Common Defense), today function in a chaotic atmosphere dominated by globalization and rapidly changing information technology. He argues that recent corporate scandals such as the collapse of Enron as well as the high salaries of CEOs are symptomatic of the lack of leadership in industry, a loss that seriously impedes business success. Drawing on myriad examples from the military, Allard provides a series of war plans that he believes can change the corporate environment. Included is a recommendation to emulate the training followed at West Point to build idealistic managers, to devise overall military-like strategies rather than marketing plans and to be aware of and responsible for security programs to combat electronic terrorism. While Allard's proposals to improve business leadership have merit, many of the military analogies are repetitive and forced. Much of his advice is delivered in an off-putting, hectoring tone that sometimes borders on bragging, and his potshots at former president Clinton feel inappropriate for a business manual.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
The author, a former army colonel currently featured as a military analyst on MSNBC and NBC News, is convinced that corporate America can learn vital lessons from the U.S. military. Business executives, according to Allard (Command, Control and the Common Defense), today function in a chaotic atmosphere dominated by globalization and rapidly changing information technology. He argues that recent corporate scandals such as the collapse of Enron as well as the high salaries of CEOs are symptomatic of the lack of leadership in industry, a loss that seriously impedes business success. Drawing on myriad examples from the military, Allard provides a series of war plans that he believes can change the corporate environment. Included is a recommendation to emulate the training followed at West Point to build idealistic managers, to devise overall military-like strategies rather than marketing plans and to be aware of and responsible for security programs to combat electronic terrorism. While Allard’s proposals to improve business leadership have merit, many of the military analogies are repetitive and forced. Much of his advice is delivered in an off-putting, hectoring tone that sometimes borders on bragging, and his potshots at former president Clinton feel inappropriate for a business manual. (Jan.) (Publishers Weekly, January 12, 2004)

From the Inside Flap
Today’s competitive business environment is so hazardous–from the threat of terrorism to black outs, from global competition to information overload–that it seems more like battle and waging war than commerce. Trying to implement even the most brilliant of business strategies is frequently impossible in the face of a shifting landscape that feels like it requires night vision goggles and precision guided weapons over marketing plans and metrics.

To help you survive (and maybe even thrive!) you need to understand the way of the warrior, and who better to train you than former National War College dean and MSNBC military commentator, Ken Allard? Whether you recognize it yet or not, the military is just a violent form of economics, and military training holds more lessons for the businessperson than not.

To succeed in today’s turbulent business environment, standard business operating procedure no longer works. For companies and management intent on thriving in a landscape of global conflict and competition, new skills must be learned and old habits abandoned. Business as War: Battling for Competitive Advantage draws sometimes startling yet keenly insightful parallels between the strategies and tactics of the United States military and the challenges that companies face in the no-holds-barred world of business. Through firsthand accounts from his military and business career as well as real-world examples that apply cutting-edge military perspectives to the everyday world of business, Allard clearly illustrates how military lessons–when implemented correctly–can lead a business down the road to success.

First, you’ll be introduced to the traditional military arts of leadership and strategy. You’ll discover how true leadership–an essential key to both business survival and prosperity–can unite an organization at every level. You’ll also learn how forming a coherent strategy can make supporting courses of action much easier to determine. Building on these critical elements, Business as War moves on to discuss the personification of the art of command, better known as "generalship," as well as how to develop the leaders needed to run a successful business operation.

After examining how people fit into the business equation, Business as War explores the proven techniques that form the basis of solid business practice. You’ll receive an executive education on a variety of important issues, including:

* How to transform information into business intelligence
* Developing modern enterprise security measures that encompass physical, computer, and information assets
* Streamlining the information-sharing process
* Changing business hierarchies to fight networks
* How to be globally effective and operate in a world where the unknown will always be a threat
* Getting corporate boards to do their job

Many of the principles that apply to war also apply to business, and in tough economic times, survival is a matter of waging war. Business as War adapts the effective tools of war to a business environment where new competitors and difficult challenges are constant threats to you and your company.
Customer Reviews

This should be required reading for all business executives!5
This book should be required reading for all executives! If you are a business executive who is tired of being surprised by your competition, or you want to maximize your competitive advantage, read this book!!! Also, if you want some customized help from experts in the field, consider hiring Ken's new firm, Business BattleLab, LLC. You can contact them through auditexec@gmail.com. You really can improve your competitive advantage and keep from being surprised!

Misleading book - No business as war1
I ordered this book to read about business war games.
There is nothing about business. Only comments about his military life. I learned nothing. A wast of time and money.

If you want prosperity, prepare for paucity...5
I was a student of Col. Allard at Gerogetown University. In his class, Technology and National Security, one of his most important lessons was the continuing way in which the offense is guaranteed to adapt to whatever defense you can mount. And vice versa... In his new book, Col. Allard takes such lessons, accumulated by milennia of warfare, and applies them to the modern business world. I recommend this book for anyone truly interested in implementing effective leadership and strategy in their organization.