The best books about business and military strategy and execution

I have known Richard Rumelt for decades and served for seven years with him on the faculty at UCLA. He is the deepest thinker about strategy I know. Dick took over 30 years to write his first book for practitioners rather than academics, but it was certainly worth the wait. He explains how a good strategy is a specific and coherent response to, and approach for, overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it has the greatest effect. A bad strategy uses vague values, buzzwords, slogans, and unlikely goals. A good strategy has to be crafted and is not produced by adherence to some simple template. The book also puts the reader in the room with Rumelt in his interactions with top executives.

Written in 1982 as one of the earliest books on strategy and still very relevant today. Ohmae was head of McKinsey Japan at the time of Japan's dominance in global business and contributed to the success of many Japanese companies. I had the great honor of meeting Ken Ohmae once and persuading him a few years later to provide an endorsement for my own book. Ohmae’s book explores the ways in which the strategist must think, the key principles and thought patterns that real-world strategists have used to move their companies forward in Japan and throughout the world. A timeless classic that is not just about Japan.

While Rumelt’s and Ohmae’s books are primarily about formulating strategy, this one is about executing strategy. Former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy and academic guru Ram Charan have combined to produce this outstanding book on implementation in organizations. The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a vision and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Having led a large organization myself, I really appreciate their clarity on what leaders have to do. I used this book as the basis for my Executive MBA elective on strategy execution at China Europe International Business School, my toughest-ever teaching challenge.

Of the many books explaining the success of the Roman Empire, this is by far the best in that it shows how Rome continually adapted its strategy in building and sustaining its empire. Rome's strategy was not ceaseless fighting but comprehensive strategies that unified force, diplomacy, and an immense infrastructure. Initially relying on client states to buffer attacks, Rome moved to permanent frontier defense. Finally, as barbarians began to penetrate the empire, Rome fielded large armies in a strategy of defense-in-depth. This book's lesson for business strategy is that companies need to constantly adapt their strategies as their circumstances change. The book also has powerful implications for modern geopolitical strategy—be flexible in both means and ends.

At the other end of the scale from Luttwak’s view of grand strategy is this book, which focuses on how supply logistics relative to conditions on the ground was the basis of Alexander's strategy and tactics. For example, Engels calculates how the carrying capacity of camels limited the distance that the Macedonian army could march. Indeed, the further the army went into territory without local food and water, the higher the proportion of the camels' load was devoted to just its own feed. The author’s brilliant use of statistics in detailed calculations totally blew me away when I came across this book in the late 1970s. It provides a truly rare combination of concept and detail.