Becoming a strategic business leader: The ultimate all-in-one guide by Adam Niazi (£11.99)
Adam Niazi is a chartered certified accountant (FCCA) with many years of consulting experience in the financial services industry. His great pocket-sized book covers everything from the nuts and bolts of strategic planning to the nuances of governance. Along the way he covers eMarketing, project management and even ethics.
There are 19 chapters in all and Niazi starts at the beginning with strategic planning and analysis, so you can’t get away from SWOT analysis, Porter’s Diamond, and of course Five Forces.
We also liked the way Naizi used practical examples – such as AI enhancing fraud detection to predict and identify fraudulent activities more effectively. He said AI can also facilitate access to unstructured data, such as contracts and emails, analysis and insights that were previously challenging to obtain.
When it comes to ethics Niazi rightly points out some of the drawbacks to a Code of Ethics. There is often a lack of clear and effective punishment for code breaches, and as with any code there can be an element of subjectivity in interpretation. Throw in technology and you get another layer on top to worry about.
PQ rating 4/5 This is a neat little 160-page tome that has all the stuff you expect on becoming a strategic business leader, but it also embraces the growth AI in our lives. In fact, Niazi admits he even used AI to help craft this book! However, he warns that the drawback in using AI is that sometimes inaccuracies can sneak in!
