Читать книгу Cut Costs, Grow Stronger : A Strategic Approach to What to Cut and What to Keep - Paul Leinwand - Страница 11

This short e-book, an electronic volume in the Harvard Business Press Memo to the CEO series, is based on years of experience. As partners at Booz & Company, our engagements have included many in which we have been asked to help remove costs while making clients fundamentally stronger. Achieving both ends simultaneously is not just a theoretical possibility; we have seen it happen in just about every industry and across all major geographies.

In the following chapters, we draw on these real-world experiences as we make the case for—and lay out the steps involved in—capability-driven cost cutting. In chapter 2, we explain what we mean by capabilities; the definition may not be quite what you’re used to. Chapter 3 is a how-to guide providing an overview of the process, tools, and techniques to do capabilities-driven cost cutting—in a companywide, intensive exercise that accomplishes much in two or three months. In chapter 4, we explain how to prevent costs from creeping back. In chapter 5, we lay out four common impediments to a wise cost-cutting strategy—all grounded in some of the habitual ways of thinking that you may take for granted. And in the Afterword, we describe the longer-term benefit of taking a capability-driven view of your business and how to use the new habits of a capability-oriented mindset to help your company grow.

We believe capability-driven strategy is an important concept in general, not just for what it tells us about costs and capabilities. The concept tells us about the value of a company’s assets, the constitution of its portfolio, the productivity and relevance of its efforts, and its right to win in the market. We are writing a separate full-length book on this subject. In effect, that will be the expansionist version of the survivalist tale we’re telling here. The world won’t be playing defense forever.

For more information on our ongoing “right to win” research and the forthcoming book on that subject (and to sign up for an electronic newsletter on this work), please visit our Web site page: http://www.booz.com/ccgs.