04/17/2023
This tightly focused, highly original lesson about organization strategy demonstrates, through engaging storytelling and clear-eyed insights, the urgency of inspiring everyone within a company to think about strategy as part of their everyday jobs—and that everyone, up and down the hierarchy, dedicates an hour to thinking about it on a steady schedule. (Executives daily; managers weekly; employees monthly.) Kraaijenbrink (No More Bananas) makes the case that strategy is a job duty for everyone through brisk dialogue and scenes as he tells the story of new marketing employee Martin’s first week at a company called Waters & Flows.
Through a series of lively meetings, Martin discovers how this “One Hour Rule” works throughout the company, how three key questions (known as RPM) help calibrate strategy, and how this approach ensures strategy is more smoothly executed and derived from a variety of viewpoints. There’s other reasons, too, but the narrative structure gives an air of minor suspense to the explanations of Kraaijenbrink’s approach. That’s tricky to pull off, but Kraaijenbrink does so with style, writing with crisp clarity and efficiency, highlighting key takeaways throughout (“Monitor actively; change reluctantly.”) and offering clarifying sidebars, acronyms, and illustrations (the “6M Model,” which “connects doing something meaningful with making money, or profitability, if you will.”)
Martin’s occasional hesitancy—and up-to-date details like him working from home one day—imbue the material with welcome relatability, as his questions may reflect reader uncertainty. Few words are wasted, here, but the teasing out of lessons through believable conversations, with some spirited back and forth, allows Kraaijenbrink to add emphasis and reinforce key ideas in a natural, inviting way without tasking readers with reading repetitive passages. The result is a book that, for readers who don’t mind a narrative approach, makes its points in a lasting way, guiding us to them right along with Martin. Self-evaluation questions, a direct conclusive essay, and other features are practical and respectful of readers’ time.
Takeaway: This brisk guide drives home, in narrative, the urgency of involving everyone in company strategy.
Great for fans of: Phil Simon’s Reimagining Collaboration, Rich Horwath’s Deep Dive.
Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
