Your scribe cannot walk through a shopping mall without going into a bookshop – although the competition from online now means accidentally finding the real thing occurs less frequently than it used to.

Once inside, seldom does the faithful credit card escape the shop without getting a workout from the business bookstall – as was the case this week with the purchase of a new management text Key Strategy Tools* published by the Financial Times imprint, London.

Key Strategy Tools is a must-read for those interested in understanding mineral industry strategy because the book brings together the plethora of strategy frameworks and related decision-making business tools under one cover.

Rather than wading through reams of texts on business management, the most popular frameworks and tools are served up in bite-sized chunks.

In so doing, the book emphasises that there is far more to thinking strategically than just an annual SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, some SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) objectives and the occasional brainstorming session and two-by-two matrix – although there are plenty of two-by-two boxes in the book for fans thereof.

The book’s cover claims that more than 80 tools are contained in its pages.

Your scribe did a quick check of those with which he was already familiar – and scored a creditable 65 out of 80.

So here goes.

Having removed some of the motherhood business-speak among the “tools” which we’ll take to be givens, such as “maximising shareholder value” and “balancing stakeholder interests”, you are invited to check through the remaining list of 50 tools and frameworks below and see how many you know.

To help you along, the original authors are inserted in brackets next to many of the tools by way of a memory jog for you.

1. Issue analysis (Minto)

2. The segmentation mincer (Koch)
3. 5C situation analysis
4. Economic value-added (Stern Stewart)
5. Balanced scorecard/strategy mapping (Kaplan & Norton)
6. Core ideology (Collins & Porras)
7. Business as a community (Handy)
8. The five forces (Porter)
9. Business complements (Brandenburger & Nalebuff)
10. PESTEL analysis
11. Value chain analysis (Porter)
12. Product/market matrix
13. Attractiveness/advantage matrix (GE Matrix)
14. Growth/share matrix (The Boston Box)
15. Strategic condition matrix (Arthur D Little)
16. The 7S framework (McKinsey)
17. The opportunity/vulnerability matrix (Bain/LEK)
18. Scenario planning
19. Generic strategies (Porter)
20. The experience curve (BCG)
21. Blue ocean strategy (Kim & Mauborgne)
22. The tipping point (Gladwell)
23. PIMS (GE)
24. The 4Ps of marketing (McCarthy)
25. Business process redesign (Hammer & Champy)
26. The hierarchy of needs (Maslow)
27. The corporate restructuring hexagon (McKinsey)
28. Creating parenting value (Goold, Campbell and Alexander)
29. Core competences (Hamel & Prahalad)
30. Strategically valuable resources (Collis & Montgomery)
31. Strategically distinctive resources (Barney)
32. Distinctive capabilities (Kay)
33. Dynamic capabilities (Teece)
34. Deliberate and emergent strategy (Mintzberg)
35. Sticking to the knitting (Peters & Waterman)
36. Profit from the core (Zook)
37. The market-driven organisation (Day)
38. Value disciplines (Treacy & Wiersemal)
39. Disruptive technologies (Christensen)
40. Co-opetition (Nalebuff & Brandenburger)
41. Growth and crisis (Greiner)
42. Good strategy, bad strategy (Rumelt)
43. Innovation hot spots (Gratton)
44. The knowledge spiral (Nonaka & Takeuchi)
45. The eight phases of change (Kotter)
46. The suns & clouds chart (Evans)
47. The 5 x 5 risk matrix
48. Expected value analysis
49. Strategic bets (Burgelman & Grove); and
50. Black swan events (Taleb).

So how many did you score?

Of course, if you scored a maximum 50 out of 50 then you don’t need the book.

Good hunting.

Allan Trench is a Professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and Research Professor (Value & Risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, a non-executive director of several resource sector companies and the Perth representative for CRU Strategies, a division of independent metals & mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).

*Vaughan Evans (2013) Key Strategy Tools – The 80+ tools for every manager to build a winning strategy. Financial Times Publishing, Pearson ISBN 978-0-273-77886-8.