Book Review: Strategy and the Fat Smoker

Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy is a book written by David H. Maister. David is acknowledged as an authority on the management of professional service firms.

The premise behind this book is rooted in the theory that most strategies fail because of the structure and commitment behind them. He summarizes that passion, people and principles are the cornerstone of any strategy. Combined they will offer a network of people with natural desire to achieve and are guided by a defined and trusted ideology. When asked whether you can succeed without each component, he offered a quote from his wife: “the most important ingredient in any recipe in the one you forgot to put in!”

There were a number of takeaways from the book that I plan to incorporate into my thinking. Here are a few:

“… the only way you can achieve any strategic distinction is to do that (turn away business). Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away.”

“Strategy is a set of rules or guidelines that tell you how to go about making decisions”

“The firm exists to help its people succeed, not the other way round.”

Mr. Maister admits in the introduction that this book is designed more as a reference and recommends you “dip into” as sections are of interest.

The first five chapters cover strategy, the next section is applying strategy to excellence in client relationships, then a section on management and lastly he pulls it together with some real life examples and summary thoughts on what it takes to stay true to your strategies.

One chapter that I found particular interesting was the “The Chief Executive’s Speech” where David re-printed a speech he wrote for a CEO that was about to begin his role for a large professional firm. You can listen to the podcast here.

Overall, this was an interesting read and I recommend it to others.

Image source: DavidMaister.com