Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose - Hardcover

"People are our most important asset." "We are a knowledge-based company." "All we have is our people." These are statements that we hear ever more frequently from more and more companies. Yet too many of the people who populate our companies, the reality of organizational life is that people do not feel they are treated as the most important assets and they do not feel their knowledge is understood or used.

The only route to improved performance is by placing your human resource at the center of your strategic decision-making. Living Strategy shows you why and how to design strategies that have meaning and purpose for people, without whose commitment they remain drawings on the board-room wall chart. It argues that a new management agenda is crucial and shares the three tenets of human organizational behavior. The six-step Living Strategy journey guides the reader through the implementation of a strategy that will not only grow your organization but also create a business of which you can be proud.

For corporate strategy to live and work, people have to understand strategy, and strategy makers have to understand people.

In this ground-breaking book, Lynda Gratton shares for the first time the "why" and "how" of putting people at the heart of corporate strategy. If companies want to increase their business performance, they need to recognize and develop the soul of the organization: they need a Living Strategy.

Professor Lynda Gratton is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School and a global authority on the people implications of strategy. She writes, teaches, and consults across the world on human resource strategy. At London Business School, she is Dean of the MBA Program and Director of the executive program "Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Organizations." Since 1992 she has directed the Leading Edge Research Consortium in partnership with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Glaxo Wellcome, and Citibank. Reflections on the companies formed the framework for Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality.

Dr. Gratton has profoundly influenced the way mangers think about human resource strategy. She is an active consultant working with some of the world's largest companies and has trained managers all over the world in her "Living Strategy" process.