Brent Grover's latest book on the wholesale distribution industry, The Little Black Book of Strategic Planning for Distributors, is published by Modern Distribution Management. This is a concise book covering the critical pieces of creating a strategic plan for a wholesale distribution company including case studies, exhibits and end-of-chapter questions for your management team. These days, companies are almost always focused on the Now. And the recent recession exacerbated that tendency. Industry expert Brent Grover's latest book will help you shift that mindset. The insights in The Little Black Book of Strategic Planning for Distributors will help you and your facilitator organize a strategic planning project, gather the needed information and build a one-page plan. Execution is the final step, and it is where many distributors fail. You will need a system to monitor results and take corrective action. This book includes what you will need to put your plan into action - a plan specifically tuned for a wholesale distribution company, though the concepts outlined can be applied at any company.

This book is exceptional treatise on strategic planning for single-business companies that is at once academically rigorous and uncommonly practical.

In today's complex world of business, strategic planning is indispensable to effective management. Ever since the mid-1950's, when American companies began to develop formal long-range planning systems, wise managers have understood the importance of knowing where their firm was headed and how it intended to get there. To function effectively in a modern, planned operation, every manager must have a practical understanding of how the planning process works. That's exactly what this book offers: a step-by-step guide to strategic planning. George A. Steiner, a well-known expert in the field of management, provides a concise, jargon-free handbook that avoids abstract theory and takes you straight to the how-to of planning. Whether you're designing and implementing a new plan or working with a plan that's already in operation, Strategic Planning puts the information you need at your fingertips. It takes you through every stage of the process, from idea to execution to evaluation. (And explains Fifty Common Pitfalls you'll need to know about.)You can plug your own data into the lucid charts, tables, and checklists for a valuable start on getting organized and evaluating your planning needs. And there's plenty of penetrating discussion about the questions and quandaries you're likely to meet along the way. For example: * How do you identify, evaluate, and implement strategies? * How do you design a planning system to fit the unique characteristics of you and your company? * Can an intuitive manager do formal strategic planning? * What are some ways to develop clear objectives? * What human behavior factors can endanger planning and how can managers overcome them? * How, and when, should a situation audit be made? * What do you need to know about computer models? * How can business planning lessons be applied to not-for-profit organizations? * How can managers apply lessons of planning experience to the planning of their own careers? You don't have to get an advanced degree to make strategic planning a part of your management style. All you need is the expert advice in this idea-packed handbook. (As a bonus the book includes a glossary of the terms, tools, and techniques of strategic planning.)

It has been said that every generation of historians seeks to rewrite what a previous generation had established as the standard interpretations of the motives and circumstances shaping the fabric of historical events. It is not that the facts of history have changed. No one will dispute that the battle of Waterloo occurred on June 11, 1815 or that the allied invasion of Europe began on June 6, 1944. What each new age of historians are attempting to do is to reinterpret the motives of men and the force of circumstance impacting the direction of past events based on the factual, social, intellectual, and cultural milieu of their own generation. By examining the facts of history from a new perspective, today's historians hope to reveal some new truth that will not only illuminate the course of history but also validate contempo rary values and societal ideals. Although it is true that tackling the task of developing a new text on logistics and distribution channel management focuses less on schools of philosophical and social analysis and more on the calculus of managing sales campaigns, inventory replenishment, and income statements, the goal of the management scientist, like the historian, is to merge the facts and figures of the discipline with today's organizational, cultural, and economic realities. Hopefully, the result will be a new synthesis, where a whole new perspective will break forth, exposing new directions and opportunities.

Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement: Develop & Measure a Winning Strategy, provides a clear and concise roadmap for designing, implementing and measuring strategy. The focus is on strategic factors, which are defined in a unique way as the criteria on which an organization or business unit has to do well in order to succeed. For organizations to be successful, they must take a stakeholder perspective of their performance – stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, employees and owners. The book cites many case studies including: 7-Eleven, Roche, K-mart, McDonald’s, Levi Strauss, Accor Hotels, Gallo Wines, Daimler Chrysler, Sears Roebuck, Mont Blanc, Tag Heuer, Lexus, Semco, Bright Horizons, Burns Philp, Scania Trucks and British Airways. This book provides a quantum leap forward in improving organizational performance. Management practitioners across the globe will find immediate and practical applications of its methods.