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<p><b>Beat the odds with a bold strategy</b></p> <p>We&rsquo;ve all seen hockey stick business plans before. A future where results sail confidently upward, but with a dip coinciding with next year&rsquo;s budget.</p> <p>CEOs usually rely on their experience and business smarts to figure out which of those hockey sticks are real, and which are fake. But all too often getting to a &ldquo;yes,&rdquo; competing for resources, and striving to claim credit, cloud the hard decisions. Another strategy framework? No thanks, we already have plenty of those, and they don&rsquo;t fix the real problem: the social dynamics in your strategy room.</p> <p>Mining the data from thousands of large companies, McKinsey Partners Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt and Sven Smit open the windows of that room, and bring an &ldquo;outside view.&rdquo; They found three discrete groups of companies: the bottom quintile with massive economic losses; the long, flat, middle 60 percent with practically no economic profit; and the top 20 percent to whom all the value accrues.</p> <p>Some companies do achieve real hockey stick performance: but just 1-in-12 jump from the middle tier to the top over a ten year period. This does not happen by magic--there is an empirically-backed science to improve your odds of success by capitalizing on your endowment, riding the right trends, and most importantly, making a few big moves.</p> <p>To make these big moves happen, you&rsquo;re going to have to break through inertia, gamesmanship and risk aversion. You&rsquo;re going to have to mitigate human biases and manage group dynamics. Eight practical shifts can help you do this, and unlock bigger, bolder, better strategies. </p> <p>This is not another by-the-book approach to strategy. It&rsquo;s not another trudge through frameworks or small-scale case studies promising a secret formula for success. It&rsquo;s an irreverent, fact-driven, and humorous take on the real world of strategic decision making.</p>