The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage

The Execution Premium is the crowning book of Kaplan and Norton's series addressing the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy maps. This book is manual for strategists as it brings together all of the current best thinking related to how an organization establishes its strategy, uses strategy maps and leverages balanced scorecards. K & N continue to their tradition of providing good case study support and graphical examples to illustrate their point. K & N also continue their tradition of thinking that strategy coupled with measurement constitutes execution.

This is a must read book for strategists, consultants and aspiring MBAs as it is a compendium of all the current approaches to strategy setting. This book's focus on integrative thinking is its greatest strength. K & N bring together Porter, Reichheld, their own work and other techniques such as PESTEL, TDABC and forceasting which are all relevant to one degree or another. If you only had money in your budget for one business book - I would recommend this one just for its sheer comprehensive coverage.