REVIEW: Manga for Success: Business Problem-Solving and Strategy (nonfiction book) by Takayuki Kito and Keisuke Yamabe, artwork by Enmo Takenawa

Business Problem-Solving and Strategy is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

One more volume after this one, and I'll have finished the entire Manga for Success series! This entry was exhausting, but also one I might potentially have to consult again, if my Dean of Libraries was serious about having librarians put together a SWOT analysis of our library. Although one thing I got out of this book is that, with the way we'll be doing it, we're highly unlikely to create a good and/or useful one.

This volume, like the other entries in the Manga for Success series, alternates between textbookish sections and manga sections that illustrate the concepts using a story/example. In the manga sections, Kazumi Matsui is Head of Business Planning for Matsui-ya, a Japanese sweets company, and the daughter of the company's founder. Matsui-ya is in trouble, and Kazumi has been tasked with putting together a business strategy that can save the company and carry it into the future. However, her first attempt at a business strategy was rejected as useless, and now she's enlisting the advice of Takeda, the Business Planning Deputy Manager of Kikutani, a food-making company. Kazumi only spent three months at Kikutani, but she came to deeply respect Takeda's abilities during that time.

The first section of the text, "Analyze the Situation," goes over how to do a SWOT analysis and emphasizes the importance of treating it as more than some blanks you're filling out on a form. The next section, "Forming Strategic Options," goes over how to use the SWOT analysis to lay out strategic options for both a preestablished company (like Matsui-ya) and newly established businesses. After that, it's time to review and select options, and finally translate options into plans and actions.

I have to admit, I got lost more than once while reading this, and, despite the authors' efforts to lay things out in an easy-to-understand way, it was still an overwhelmingly large amount of information. It was still interesting, however, to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that likely went into, say, my university's Strategic Plan. It also helped me see some potential issues in the plan's creation and execution.