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Execution:
The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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What Its All About Execution is what executives do, and Larry
Bossidy has done a great deal of it, and Ram Charan has advised lots of
executives on how to do it better. Their combined efforts appear in a
conversational new book titled Execution:
The Discipline of Getting Things Done. This is a readable primer for
managers at all levels, and if read by groups of managers can provide grist
for many conversations. Here’s the authors’ take on what to expect
from the Introduction (pp. 6-9): As an adviser to senior leaders of companies large and small, I often work with a client for ten or more consecutive years. I have the opportunity to observe corporate dynamics over time and to participate directly in them. I first began to identify the problem of execution more than three decades ago, as I observed that strategic plans often did not work out in practice. As I facilitated meetings at the CEO and division levels, I watched and studied, and I saw that leaders placed too much emphasis on what some call high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. People would agree on a project or initiative, and then nothing would come of it. My own nature is to follow through, so when this happened. I'd pick up the phone, call the person in charge, and ask, "What happened?" In time I saw a pattern and realized that execution was a major issue. Here is the fundamental problem:
people think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders
delegate while they focus on the perceived "bigger" issues. This idea is completely wrong.
Execution is not just tactics—it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built
into a company's strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the
organization must be deeply engaged in it. He cannot delegate its
substance. Many business leaders spend vast amounts of time learning and
promulgating the latest management techniques. But their failure to understand
and practice execution negates the value of almost all they learn and preach.
Such leaders are building houses without foundations. Execution is not only the biggest issue facing business today;
it is something nobody has explained satisfactorily. Other disciplines have
no shortage of accumulated knowledge and literature. Strategy? So much
thinking has gone into strategy that it's no longer an intellectual challenge.
You can rent any strategy you want from a consulting firm. Leadership
development? The literature on it is endless. Innovation? Ditto. Nor is there
any shortage of tools and techniques that can help leaders get things done—approaches
to organization structure and incentive systems, business process design,
methodologies for promoting people, guides to culture change. We talk to many leaders who fall
victim to the gap between promises they've made and results their organizations
delivered. They frequently tell us they have a problem with
accountability—people aren't doing the things they're supposed to do to
implement a plan. They desperately want to make changes of some kind, but
what do they need to change? They don't know. So we see a great need for this
book. Execution is not just something that does or doesn't get done.
Execution is a specific set of behaviors and
techniques that companies need to master in order to have competitive
advantage. It is a discipline of its own.
In big companies and small ones, it is the critical discipline for success
now. Execution will help you, as a
business leader, to choose a more robust strategy. In fact, you can't craft a
worthwhile strategy if you don't at the same time make sure your organization
has or can get what's required to execute it, including the right resources
and the right people. Leaders in an execution culture
design strategies that are more road maps than rigid paths enshrined in fat
planning books. That way they can respond quickly when the unexpected
happens. Their strategies are designed to be executed. Execution paces everything. It enables you to see what’s going
on in your industry. It's the best means for change and transition—better than
culture, better than philosophy. Execution-oriented companies change faster
than others because they're closer to the situation. If your business has to survive
difficult times, if it has to make an important shift in response to
change—and these days just about every
business does—it's far, far more likely to succeed if it's executing well. Leading for execution is not
rocket science. It's very straightforward stuff. The main requirement is that
you as a leader have to be deeply and passionately engaged inyour
organization and honest about its realities with others and yourself. This is true whether you're
running a whole company or your first profit center. Any business leader, at
any company or any level, needs to master the discipline of execution. This
is the way you establish credibility as a leader. By the time you've finished
this book, you'll understand how to do it. Your know-how of the discipline of
execution will be a competitive advantage. If you then proceed to put it into
action in your business, we know you'll generate better results. In part I, chapters I and 2, we explain the discipline of execution,
why it is so important today, and how it can differentiate you from your
competitors. Part 2, chapters 3 to 5, shows that execution doesn't just
happen. Fundamental building blocks need to be in place, and we identify and describe
the most important: the leader's personal priorities, the social software of
culture change, and the leader's most important job—selecting and appraising
people. Part 3 is the how-to section of the book. Chapters 6 to 9
discuss the three core processes of people, strategy, and operations. We show
what makes them effective, and how the practice of each process is linked to
and integrated with the other two. Chapter 6 covers the people
process, which is the most important of the three. Done well, it results in a
leadership gene pool that can conceive and shape executable strategies and
convert them into operating plans and specific points of accountability. Chapters 7 and 8 cover the
strategy process. We show how effective strategic planning can bring you from
conceptual thinking at 50,000 feet down to reality: this process develops a
strategy building block by building block, testing its executability. It also
links back to the people process. If the strategy proposed and its backup logic
are clearly in sync with the realities of the marketplace, the economy, and
the competition, then the people process has worked. The right people are in
the right jobs. The problem with many so-called
strategies is that they're too abstract and shallow, or else they're really
operations plans, not strategies. The leadership and its capabilities may be
mismatched: for example, a leader may have great skills in a business
function like marketing or finance but may not be a strategist. In chapter 9 we show that no
strategy delivers results unless it's converted into specific actions. The
operations process shows how to build, block by block, an operating plan that
will deliver the strategy. Both the strategy and operations plans link with
the people process to test the match between organizational capabilities and
what is required to execute the operating plan. Every manager is likely to come away from Execution
with several ideas of what to try to do differently. While this book doesn’t explain
clearly enough how to do what the authors present, they point readers in the
right direction, and stimulate thinking and further discussion from which
ideas will flow about what changes make the most sense for a particular individual
and organization. Steve Hopkins, December 23, 2002 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the January 2003
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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