BOOK REVIEW
Book Title: Pursuing Enterprise Outcomes: Maximizing Business Value and Improving Strategy for Organizations and Teams
Author: Alex Yakyma
Publisher: Self-published on Amazon
List Price: $29.00
Format: Paperback (290 pages) & eBook
Publication Date: August 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9981629-2-8
Reviewer: Ramadevi Lanka
Review Date: October 2021
Introduction
Business units and practices such as HR (Human resources), Finance, programs, and projects will be in constant need to maximize business value and pursue outcomes. This book provides numerous solutions to succeed with such challenging and tough initiatives. Every line in the book is worth a read and a thought to ponder. Many times, enterprise initiatives will not get the desired outcome, despite having a strategy, action plan, resources, and supporting data points. More so, it even gets difficult to spot why things didn’t go as planned and makes it impossible to come up with an appropriate retrospective.
Enterprise units and programs alike, resort to training and workshops to arrive at the strategy to succeed in complex initiatives and to come up with action plans. It is amazing to see how the author is able to render such a powerful ‘Problem-Tool-Solution-Action’ loop, to boost the ability to succeed in a multitude of such scenarios. This is not a book to just read; the book speaks to you, interacts with you, and connects with you.
The book is filled with practical examples. All the concepts are driven through anecdotes and examples, leaving the reader feel light and not get tangled in a whole lot of theory. It also helps in the higher retention of approaches and concepts described in the book. Like how a picture paints a thousand words, a narrative drives a thousand concepts.
Overview of Book’s Structure
The content in the book is well-spaced across seven sections. Initial chapters are less loaded with simple business problem scenarios. This helps the reader get glued to the book. Each section starts with a question or a thought, delving with supporting analogies, detailing new concepts, and suitably ending with specific action points. Each chapter seems complete in itself. New chapters start expanding into deeper concepts with scenarios closer to real life. As it progresses to chapter 4 and beyond, the reader gets into the mode of “I want to keep reading, discovering” – more with curiosity to know what next.
Chapter one introduces Interaction maps which are intuitive diagrams to capture the landscape of interaction in the enterprises. Chapters one and two talk about how disconnects in the system tend to reinforce one another, leaving behind limited useful capacity, typically invisible to the organization. Simple concepts such as observation, conversation, asking the same question to different people, are explained with a framework and diagrammatic approach. Subsequent chapters reveal strategies to address the problem of producing less, real value due to disconnects in the system.
Chapter three introduces the crux of the subject – outcomes, how they are different from outputs, and the journey in pursuit of outcomes. Despite all the hard work, quite often, unrecoverable and partial waste gets produced. This chapter is an eye-opener for why that happens. The chapter takes a radical departure from legacy thinking. For example, refuting traditional output-based thinking that scope and time are THE primary success indicators. Looking only at outputs may end up like, the operation is successful, but the patient died.
More…
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How to cite this book review: Lank, R. (2021). Pursuing Enterprise Outcomes: Maximizing Business Value and Improving Strategy for Organizations and Teams, book review, PM World Journal, Vol. X, Issue XI, November. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/pmwj111-Nov2021-Lanka-Pursuing-Enterprise-Outcomes-book-review.pdf
About the Reviewer
Ramadevi Lanka
India and Texas, USA
Rama Lanka is a Program/Project/Quality Management professional with 20+ years of enriching work experience in the software industry. Her work execution is driven with a strong customer focus, quality focus, and business value realization focus. Known for Customer retention through on-time delivery of Projects / Programs meeting the requirements with expected quality, she is experienced in designing and delivering training programs, application & product testing, Enterprise Change Management, Software Delivery Centre setup & management for Global Enterprises. Rama enjoys giving back to the community by doing volunteering activities, mentoring, and sharing knowledge. Ms. Lanka can be contacted at Rama.Lanka@yahoo.com
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