u/KennedyFBobby

This weeks book review: Business Strategy Formulation: The 7C Strategy Wheel

Easily the strongest synthesis of strategy formulation I've encountered, and a serious contender for one of the best business strategy books of 2026. Most strategy books pick a side (Porter vs Mintzberg, deliberate vs emergent, blue ocean vs red (plan on reviewing this book next week)) and try to convince you their lens is the right one. Dr Yaghi instead introduces the 7C Strategy Wheel, a decision architecture that maps 7 strategic postures down to 28 distinct approaches and then 59 specific methods, with the three layers actually wired together. The useful part is that each layer answers a different question (what's our stance, how do we formulate given that stance, what concrete process do we use), so you're not stuck at the abstract level the way most strategy frameworks leave you. You can actually trace from strategic context to a named method, which is rare for a framework book. Rather than treating those approaches as rivals competing for the "right" answer, the wheel treats them as a portfolio you select from based on your context. I honestly found the sheer empirical weight of the research to be extraordinary, the framework draws from hundreds of strategy tools and thousands of academic and practitioner sources. And emphasis on the practitioner sources, this is by no means a purely theoretical or academic book, the framework is a remarkably comprehensive and practical toolkit. For how comprehensive the framework is, the book stays practical the whole way through. It's certainly written for people who actually have to make strategic decisions, not just study them - I believe it's a must have on any strategic practitioners bookshelf.

Curious what you guys thinks about the broader move toward portfolio-based strategy frameworks vs the older "pick a school" approach. Feels like Rumelt's Good Strategy / Bad Strategy was nudging in this direction but didn't fully commit to integrating approaches. Anyone else find the schools-of-thought debate increasingly unhelpful in practice?

This weeks book: Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

Overall a very grounded, practical take on what “strategy” actually means in business. The big strength is how simple and operational the core framework is choosing where to play and how to win, and then forcing real trade-offs instead of vague “we want to be the best in everything” thinking. It’s heavily rooted in real corporate examples - P&G especially (one of the co-authors was a former CEO of P&G), which makes it feel less abstract than a lot of strategy books. That said, it’s more of a clean executive framework than a deep exploration of strategy in messy, dynamic environments, but as a baseline mental model for structured strategic thinking, it’s solid and still very relevant.

Anyone have any thoughts on it?

This week's book: Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything

Overall I think it does exactly what it sets out to do: give a very structured, consulting-style approach to breaking down messy problems. The 7-step framework is clear, repeatable, and actually useful if you’re working in strategy/consulting or just want to get better at not jumping straight into solutions. It’s definitely heavy on MECE and logic trees, so it can feel a bit rigid for more ambiguous, nonlinear problems, but I think that’s kind of the point, it’s about forcing clarity before creativity. Definetely does seem to be more consulting-centric; it's not really revolutionary, but very solid as a foundational “how to think” book for structured problem solving.

Curious to know your guys' thoughts on it?