Preventing Strategic Gridlock: Leading Over, Under & Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results
Pamela S. Harper, Cameo Publications, $19.95, 232 pages, ISBN 0-9715739-4-8, (Copyright 2003), available at bookstores and online at www.cameopublications.com

As business leaders in every industry strive to move their organizations forward, they are faced with the task of balancing those strategies that should work with ones that actually will work based on their organization's unique reality. In her new book Preventing Strategic Gridlock: Leading Over, Under & Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results, business performance consultant Pamela S. Harper shows leaders how to do exactly that.

Harper asserts that today's turbulent business environment poses major challenges for even the savviest and most well-intended leaders. As a result, strategies and initiatives that looked good during planning often end up mysteriously snarled in a tangled web of persistent organizational problems (what she terms "strategic gridlock") during execution. After witnessing this "strategic gridlock" phenomenon in action in companies of all sizes, Harper has identified not only the causes of the gridlock cycle, but also the steps to overcome it.

In Part One of Preventing Strategic Gridlock, Harper reveals and explains seven of the most common hidden roadblocks that stall business growth. To illustrate her points, she uses timely case studies (taken from widely-publicized news accounts) from a number of well-known companies and provides a thorough, step-by-step analysis of the seemingly apparent roadblock in action. Though not an expose' on corporate shortcomings, the case studies act as a backdrop to present Harper's premise and to show how the various roadblocks could appear in practice. Harper then poses "Checklist" questions so readers can determine whether a particular roadblock is contributing to their own organization's challenges.

Part Two of Preventing Strategic Gridlock details Harper's six-step process for reducing the gridlock and enabling leaders to more smoothly integrate execution with strategic thinking and planning. She explains that she based the process upon six major principles and guidelines of organizational reality that she identified during her consulting experiences and research. The principles and guidelines appropriately form the acronym U.N.L.O.C.K., as that's what they ultimately help organizations do - "unlock" their performance so they can move forward.

Preventing Strategic Gridlock is a refreshing change from the standard business book fare that bombards business leaders today. Harper never admonishes leaders for falling into any of the roadblock traps nor does she urge them to change into something they're not; instead, she acts as a guide to get people back on track to the high performance results they desire. She artfully weaves real-life examples and allegorical learning lessons with business advancement strategies and clearly-defined steps to present a process that not only promotes business growth, but also enables leaders to more effectively approach strategic thinking, planning, and execution.

As the business landscape continues to evolve, leaders need every resource possible to move their organizations forward. Preventing Strategic Gridlock: Leading Over, Under & Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results provides an entertaining, educational, and logical discussion of how leaders can take control of the gridlock within their organizations before the gridlock takes control of them.

About the Author:
Pamela S. Harper is a nationally known speaker, author, and the founder and president of Business Advancement, Inc. Since 1991, BAI has helped leaders transform their business strategies into high performance results. Pam's approach is based on 20 years experience as an internal and external consultant to leaders of entrepreneurial, mid-sized, and Fortune 500 companies.