"A practical guide to staying afloat in today's turbulent business waters... A vital resource for CEOs and other strategic planners interested in not just surviving, but prospering."
-Richard Meinhold
Director of Business Development and Planning - Lockheed Marietta
In business, as in life, knowing where you are is a key to getting where you want to be. But too many companies ignore this simple maxim, and instead plan their future based on the past, paying little attention to current trends and opportunities in the marketplace. Only by thinking strategically and understanding their current relationships with their markets can organizations achieve future goals - and create a competitive advantage.
"In a book laced with captivating stories from the past, Bill Rouse's Start Where You Are elaborates on predictable patterns of business transitions. It provides some excellent lessons on embracing inevitable change and using it for strategic advantage along with some chilling reminders of the risk of past success and future business inertia."
-Jim Prendergast
Chief Technologist & Director of Strategy - Motorola
Start Where You Are presents a method for assessing the strategic situation of a business before strategic planning begins. It lays the groundwork required for implementing many of today's most popular strategic planning approaches. Bill Rouse has developed a set of ten archetypical situations that describe the common patterns experienced by most organizations. Using these ten situations and the strategic situation assessment method, companies can identify their own current state and begin the process of planning for their success in the future.
"A practical simplified framework for all to use, that quickly characterizes who and where you are, and helps you build from there to achieve organizational goals."
-Charlie Giorgetti
Manager, Planning & Development Graphics & Multimedia Products - Digital Semiconductor
Part One: Knowing Where You Are
1. Finding the Pattern; Your Company's Evolving Relationship With the Market
2. Identifying Where You Are; The Ten Most common Business Situations
3. Recognizing Where You Are Headed; The Five Most Common Business Stories
4. Assessing Your Relationship With the Market; The Situation Assessment Method
Part Two: Taking a Longer View: Stories of Three Industries and Their Market Relationships.
5. Transportation: Serving an Existing Market
6. Computers: Creating a New Market
7. Defense: From Cold War to Broader Markets
8. Changing Before It's Too Late: Creating a New Relationship With Your Market
"Strategic plans are too often based on the erroneous assumption that the enterprise is in a relatively unchanging market environment where today's strategies will continue to work indefinitely. Start Where You Are provides an excellent set of tools to help you assess your current and potential future market situations so that the need for changing your strategies can be recognized before it's too late."
-David W. Givens
Director of Strategic Planning & Business Development - Honeywell
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