Starting from the end, the book (Goodreads link) feels useful, the core story of it, when you think of it reminds you of a particular consultancy cycle - initial expectations are high, then disillusionment and a certain “plateau of productivity” at the end.

If such a style of thinking about a book seems a bit awkward, you probably wouldn’t like it.

But if you’d be a person working for a rather large company, ideally where “Tech” is not its primary industry, that would be the spot.

It seems to outline a consistent idea flow on what tools you’d use in ”building the Strategy”. Starting from outlining the idea of strategy (briefly) and bringing more and more tools to a shop - from MECE & Decision Trees to Stakeholder Matrix and pre-aligning of meetings.

In the course of a book, you'd be presented with 39 patterns (I’m storing them in my memory as “tools”), and they come with the relationship schema.

All in all, I’d consider learning/organizing the context for a set of tools quite useful, it does expand one's operational capacity for thinking in some contexts.

On the other hand, one that is important to highlight - sometimes, the whole premise of the clever and consistent argument is broken and logical consistency outside the premise, doesn’t help.

(There’s a note that it grows in my view to “plateau” not only from the utility of tools provided but also a certain level of self-conscience in methods & advice, intellectually clever notes - all of which are great for reading aftertaste, and a bit sad too.)

In that case - in essence, it outlines the tools with the premise of them being “sold” to executives through a medium of presentation deck.

While the approach is indeed widespread in the industry, Tech is not necessarily about a series of presentations to be sold to the executive committee.

But when you find that it is, do read it.