Execution-Book

Review
The discipline of getting things done
Group 5 12P085 Manish Gupta 12P086 Mohit Batra 12P087 Nikhil Gupta 12P088 Nitish Gupta 12P089 Pankaj Singla 12P090 Abhijit Parekh

Table of Contents
Sr. No. Topic Page no.

Introduction

Chapter-1: Why Execution Is Necessary

Chapter 2: The Execution Difference

Chapter 3: Building Block 1- Leaders Seven Essential Behaviors

Chapter 4: Building Block 2- Create the Framework for Cultural Change

Chapter 5: The Job No Leader Should Delegate Having the Right People in the Right Place

Chapter 6: The People Process: Making the Link with Strategy and Operations

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Chapter 7: The Strategy Process: Making the Link With People and Operations

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Chapter 8: How to Conduct a Strategy Review

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Chapter 9: The Operations Process- Making the Link with Strategy and People

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Conclusion

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Learning from the book

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Introduction:
This book talks about how important a role execution holds in any company. Almost all companies today face many problems in their day to day running like decreased margins in profit, falling revenues and many more. This book basically says that leaders of companies today need to make their plans happen also along with just planning them. Setting goals and targets is only half the work done but executing it to the final step is equally important. It starts with Larry Bossidy talking about his change from General Electric, where he spent 34 years of his career, to AlliedSignal. He had taken Execution as granted when he was in General Electric and after entering AlliedSignal he realized the importance of it. It was a perfect example of how a company cannot work to its fullest potential and give an efficient output even though they have really bright employees.

Chapter-1: Why Execution Is Necessary

Management techniques and Strategic Thinking are the hot topics in the industry right now. Most of the efforts and resources of a company are put into strategizing regarding the future plan of the company or something similar. Hardly anyone talks about execution of their plans or puts a lot of focus on it. To understand Execution three things should be kept in mind: 1. Execution is a Discipline- No strategy can be planned without considering the factors, which would be present in case of its execution. It involves a lot of questions about the hows, whats and whys. These questions are asked so as to be clear about how to go regarding the achievement of the goals and targets, which have been set. 2. Execution Is the Major Job of Business Leader- It is a common perception that leaders at the top dont need to know whats going on in office. In fact only a leader can make execution happen. 3. Execution Must Be a Core Element of a Business Culture- Execution should be present in the core competencies of the company. It should be a basic belief that a company follows. It should be ingrained deep within the values of the people working for the company. A true great leader has an instinct for execution. Most of the leaders who have risen to the top position of a company are famous for their high level of thinking and they have almost no or very little interest in the know how of things i.e. how the things are actually run. Leaders sometimes do not involve everyone who is a part of the outcome of the strategic plan. These people are not generally asked about the execution of a project. Hence sometimes, big strategies of leaders fail due to these loopholes, which had been left in the plan that was mainly regarding the execution of it. Most of the strategies of big companies fail because of their shortcoming in the execution part of the plan. Thus this should be highly taken care of, as most of the preparations would go in vain, if after making all the goals and targets, it doesnt execute to give the expected result.

Chapter 2: The Execution Difference

This chapter talks about the different failures that had taken place in the industry due to absence of execution in their plans. It talks about 4 companies: 1. Trouble with Joe- Joe is the CEO of the company, which was being talked about in the introduction to the book. The problem he was facing was that he had contracted a top-consulting firm to develop a new strategy but his people couldnt deliver the anticipated results. A major problem was that the plant work was going 12 months behind schedule and though he kept calling his subordinates to check on them and kept asking them to correct their work, he never asked the reasons for the problems. 2. Gap at Xerox- the problem at Xerox started after they hired the new COO Richard Thomson. He was considered one of the most thoughtful people to head major American companies. He soon became the CEO of the company. Then he started developing new strategies and brought big changes in the company. It was what was required from the company at that time. But Xerox bit off more than it could chew. Making large plans for the company turned out to be a mistake because he hadnt considered about the execution of these plans. 3. Gap at Lucent- The culture at Lucent went against it. The manager level employees did not know the profits made by the customer and hence they couldnt really decide on how much sources to allocate. They also missed out on opportunities in routers and optical gear. As a result the downfall of Lucent came before the crisis hit the telecommunication sector. 4. Execution at EDS- Dick Brown was since start an execution oriented person. He applied that concept to EDS. He instilled the company with an energy that it had never experienced before. Brown jumped into the field by firstly travelling around the world and meeting all the employees. He talked to them, asked for everyones feedback. He held conference calls in which he got a review of how things were going on

in the different places. If he felt there was a problem he would give an early warning to the leader and ask for the reasons for such an event. He held many sessions where he could teach the managers of the company and impart them knowledge regarding the way to approach things. Thus he was really involved with the company at every level possible.

Chapter 3: Building Block 1- Leaders Seven Essential Behaviors

This chapter tells about the 7 essential behaviors, which should be followed by a leader to be in charge of execution and overlook smooth running of the company: 1. Know your people and your business- It is very important everything about the people who are working for the company and also the kind of work which is being done. If the leader doesnt know about the day-today happenings of the company then the execution in tht company would be very less. 2. Insist on Realism- Many people in an organization sometimes try to ignore the real situation because it is not according to their convenience or causes problem to them. This doesnt help in the growth of the company. If the truth is faced, the mistkaes can be rectified so that the outcome is better. 3. Set clear goals and priorities- Specificity produces better output. If the goals are clear, the employees would know what to work for and what to attain. This would help them in applying their energy in a specific direction. Also, lesser goals also enhance the betterment. 4. Follow through- If goals are worked for but they arent followed up then it wont be of use because if the work is not carried on till the end it wont help the company. Leaders need to keep a check on the employees if the assigned work is being done or not. 5. Reward the doers- If a company wants to motivate the people, rewards should be given regularly to the people who work really hard. Some 6

companies dont differentiate between hard working people and others and thus the hard working people feel that injustice is being done to them. 6. Expand peoples capabilities- A very important concept of being a great leader is to impart knowledge and share whatever knowledge you might have. It helps in the expansion of the whole company. 7. Know yourself- The leader should be well aware of himself and his feelings. He might have to show emotional fortitude sometimes in the industry towards people who are not working properly. Being honest with oneself would also help the leader and the company in growing.

Chapter 4: Building Block 2- Create the Framework for Cultural Change

Sometimes leaders try to change the culture of a company when the business is not going well. Though its a proven fact that the culture of the company does affect the business but it will really change the situation of a business if its done around the concept of execution. A New Way of Thinking The culture of an organization is the sum of its shared values, beliefs, and norms of behavior. Sometimes lea ders tend to change the values of a business when instead they should be focusing on the beliefs of the company because these beliefs only make a person act for the company. These beliefs should be checked if they are in sync with execution of the company. Change Behavior by Changing Rewards The company should appreciate any kind of work done by the employee. The companies do appreciate the work by awarding rewards to them. But they give rewards on the basis of he work done by the employees, whereas they should also reward them for any kind of desirable behavior adapted by them.

The Importance of Dialogue There should be openness between the employees. They should be able to say whatever they would like to. This candid behavior will help everyone in receiving the original opinion of each other and thus in the process will help in improving their shortcomings.

Chapter 5: The Job No Leader Should DelegateHaving the Right People in the Right Place
People are the most reliable source for an organization to get excellent results. Their judgments, experiences, and capabilities make the difference between success and failure. Therefore, intense focus by leaders on people selection is people leads to a business becoming consistently successful. Why the Right People Arent in the Right Jobs It is common sense that organizations should have only right people at right jobs. But there are huge mismatch because of the following reasons :1. Lack of Sufficient Knowledge -Leaders do not have sufficient knowledge and often appraise staff on wrong criteria. They do not have much knowledge about the job requirements and specific qualities required for a particular job and often make fuzzy recommendations like He is a great leader and visionary. 2. Lack of Courage - The higher level people know who is not performing well in the organization but mostly they dont have the courage and emotional fortitude to face the situation and take appropriate decision 3. Psychological Comfort Factor -Many incompetent people are promoted or continue to keep their job position because of the comfort factors of leaders with them. It is natural that people form emotional bonds with people with whom they work for a particular amount of time, but this emotional bond should not affect the judgement 4. Lack of Personal Commitment - Since humans are one of the most important resources in an organization, leaders should give the same importance and time in selecting, appraising and developing people as

it is given to budgeting, strategic planning and financial monitoring. Most of the leaders are aware and acknowledge that right people are not in right jobs in the organization but a lack of personal commitment to resolve the problems is usually observed Kind of People that are Required in an Organization Following are the qualities that the companies should look for while selecting people: 1. They Energize People A leader should be able to motivate the employees by concentrating on short term accomplishments which are building blocks to the long term goal or vision. Giving rhetoric talks or painting an uplift picture is not helpful in energizing people. 2. Theyre Decisive on Tough Issues Leaders should be able to make difficult decisions quickly and effectively. They should have emotional fortitude and should not waver, procrastinate and avoid reality while making decision 3. They Get Things Done Through Others Leader should be able to delegate responsibilities and should trust people. In case they are not doing so they will be micromanaging and will not be able to concentrate on larger critical issues. Also, if a leader is not able to get work done from others is likely to end up putting in untold hours and pushing everyone else also to do the same and hence wasting time. 4. They Follow Through A good leader should be good at executing follows through religiously. He should never launch an initiative unless he is personally committed to it and prepared to see it through until its embedded in the culture of an organization. How to Get the Right People in the Right Jobs Interviewers should focus on past educational record and the performance in previous jobs of a candidate. They should try to know about the implementation and decision making capability of the person.

The Unvarnished Truth While evaluating people, a complete holistic view should be kept in mind and should focus on consistency, resourcefulness, creativity in the face of adversity and commitments towards organizations long term goals. The appraisal should be honest and the feedback should be straightforward, to the point and relevant to the appraise. Relevant steps should be taken to develop competency based upon the feedback.

Chapter 6: The People Process: Making the Link with Strategy and Operations
Right people are required for business to work to its full potential. People are required to make judgments about continuously changing markets, create strategies based on those judgments, and translate the strategies into operational realities. Robust people process is required which has the following features:1. It evaluates individuals accurately and in depth. 2. It provides a framework for identifying and developing the leadership talent at all levels and of all kinds-the organization will need to execute its strategies down the road 3. It fills the leadership pipeline thats the basis of a strong succession plan. Today, only few organizations are able to accomplish the above mentioned goals effectively. The major shortcoming of the traditional people process is that the orientation of such a process is backward-looking and evaluates the jobs what people are doing today. A robust process require orientation where we look how individuals can handle the jobs of tomorrow. A robust people process has a framework which is powerful enough to determine the organizations talents needs over time and for planning actions that will meet those needs. It is based on the following building blocks: 1. Linkage to the strategic plan and companys milestones (Short, mid and long term) and the operating plan target which includes specific financial targets.

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2. Develop the leadership pipeline through continuous improvement, succession depth, and reducing retention risk. 3. Decides what to do about non-performers. The final test of a people process is how well it is able to distinguish between managers who have been promoted beyond their capabilities and required to be put in lesser jobs and those who need to be moved out, and how well leaders handle the painful actions they have to take. 4. Transform the mission and operations of HR. HR has to be made integral part of the organization. It needs to be linked to strategy and operations, and to the assessments that the line people ultimately make about people. HR becomes recruitment oriented and a far more powerful force for advancing the organization than its typical staff function. The Leadership Assessment Summary: It is a useful tool in developing the total picture of the leadership pipeline. The tool compares both performance and behaviour for a group of individuals. It provides a summary of those in the group who have high potential and those who are promotable People possessing both qualities are placed in upperright hand quadrant and people lacking both of these qualities are placed in lower-left-hand. Similarly, people possessing any one of the capability are put in the required quadrant

Chapter 7: The Strategy Process: Making the Link With People and Operations
The basic goal of any strategy is to define a business direction with which consumers preference can be won and a sustainable competitive advantage is created while creating enough profit for shareholders. But a good strategy should include hows of execution i.e. the strategic plan must be an action plan that business leaders can trust to reach their business objectives or goals.

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The strategic plan should take into consideration the external environment under which the business operates. Also since action plan is executed by people only, a realistic strategy is also linked to people process The Building Blocks of Strategy A good strategy is a summation of building blocks, the basic key concepts and actions that define it. Dissecting the strategy in building blocks forces leaders to be clear in their objectives. It helps them to evaluate the goodness of strategy and seek for alternatives is required. Building the Strategic Plan A strategy should contain the specific terms which are based on the direction which unit wants to take in future and how it is going to reach there. It should also take into account all costs of the results and capital resources it will require. It should also analyze the risks that are involved and should have the flexibility in case new opportunities arise or the plan fails. Also the strategy should not be complex. Who Builds the Plan? The business leaders must be in charge of developing the substance of the strategic plan but the staff and line people can help by collecting data and using tools as only line people will be executing the strategy. It should be from a group, which is guided by a leader who has a comprehensive understanding of the business and its environment. Assessment of the External Environment Organization should examine each and every aspect from economic and demographic trends and regulatory shifts to new technologies, alliances between competitors, the drivers of increasing or decreasing demand for its products and so forth.

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Milestones for Executing the Plan Milestones are essential as they bring reality to the plan and help the company to evaluate and alternate their strategy if required. The strategy should have an appropriate balance of short term and long term mission. Since strategy planning needs to be conducted in real time, it should be flexible so that it can be changed if required as the competitive environment. So breaking the mission into short, middle and long term helps to bring reality.

Chapter 8: How to Conduct a Strategy Review

The review of strategic plan should include everybody thinking and talking about reality. They should look for new ideas and should not just have a reprise of the last years plan. The discussion should focus on the following basic questions 1. Is the plan plausible and realistic? 2. Is it internally consistent? 3. Does it match the critical issues and the assumptions? 4. Are people committed to it? Also review should include how the organization is well versed with the competition. Mostly the organizations are seen to focus on past history: industry dynamics, cost structure, market share, brand differentiation and power in distribution channels. Instead the focus should be on present time reporting and what competitors are likely to do next. The Strategy should be made after evaluating the organizations capability to execute the strategy. That is the point where we see the linkage between strategy and people process become critical. The plan should not be scattered and should be focused, i.e. leadership should not be too ambitious and have predefined set of priorities.

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Choosing the Right Ideas The company should execute an idea only after taking the risk of failure into account and should see that idea do not force the organization to acquire capabilities which are too costly. Following questions must be considered before committing to an idea 1. Is the idea consistent with the realities of market place? 2. Does it mesh with the organizations capabilities? 3. Is the organization pursuing more ideas that it can handle? 4. Will the idea make money? Evaluating the Linkage with People and Operations? Achievement of goals require linkage of strategy with people and organizations. The linkage between strategy and operations can be established by reviewing if the plan describes a strategic direction, resources required and the program to be executed quarter by quarter. Similarly if a business wants to go in a new strategy it should keep in mind the quality and quantity of the people involved and should made a decision based upon that. Following Through Finally , at the end of the strategy review the leader should write a letter to all the participants in order to solidify and confirm the agreements You made so that it can be used as the basis for reviewing further progress

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Chapter 9: The Operations Process- Making the Link with Strategy and People
A good operating plan integrates people and strategy through operations. The operating plan should be owned by everybody in the organization as the more the people which are aware of the expectations from them, the more is the achievement for the organization. Budgeting in Organizations Usually the budgeting exercise starts by setting of goals by the top management and then operation plan is made so as to accommodate the budget. Such kind of process has the following three flaws 1. The process doesnt provide for robust dialogue on the plans assumptions. 2. The budget is built around what the top management wants but it doesnt specify the action plan 3. It doesnt coaching opportunity for people to understand the complete picture Hence the budget should be a simultaneous dialogue exercise between all the relevant business leaders. The Importance of Organization Synchronization among different units of organization for efficient execution of the operation plan. All the parts of the organization should have common assumptions about the external environment throughout the operating year and have a common understanding.For instance there is no synchronization between the marketing and production department it can lead to increase in costs or loss in sales. Sound Assumptions The quality of assumptions reflect the level of understanding the business has about the reality of the external environment. Only if we are having the right assumptions, we will be able to reap benefits in good environment and sustain 15

in bad situations. A leader should question all the way down the line whether people have thought throughout of all the ingredients of the plan. He needs to identify any troublesome assumption and take corrective action. Building the Operating Plan It is a three part process which starts with setting of targets. The second part consist of development of action plans and including making necessary trade offs to balance short term and long term objectives.The final part consists building consensus among all the members and the closure. The plan starts by identifying the key targets like: revenues,operating margin,profit, productivity,etc. The number of these targets should be decided taking into consideration economic and competitive environment. The Art of Making Trade Offs The focus should be clear ideas that will grow business profitably keeping in mind the trade offs which are required to balance the short term and the long term goals. For example, investing in research and development will be beneficial in long run but will be having cost attached to it in the short run and hence will require a trade off. Trade off across different functions are also complex. For example, in case of an economic slowdown, company should evaluate critically the closure of which unit of the organization will have minimal impact on the profitability. Outcomes of the Operations Process If operation plan is clear and is made after considering the external environment, it will lead to results, which are closer to the objectives of the company. An effective operation plan should also have an effective contingency plan. Finally quarterly review and follow through are must to keep the execution in line with objectives

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Conclusion:
In the year 2000, 40 CEOs of the Top 200 Fortune 500 companies were let go. This clearly indicates the fact that even the brightest and intelligent of minds can fault in the real world. This book tells us the importance of execution in any strategic plan. Even if the plan is highly innovative or fault proof, it can still all go down the drain if the execution is not done properly. There are certain important points to be understood: Role of leader is very important in execution. Success or failure on basis of execution depends highly on the leader and how involved he is with the processes of the company. Execution must be one of the core competencies of the company embedded deep in the organizations culture. Another important point which was emphasized was that the people process is very important i.e. getting the right people at the right jobs, teaching them the basics of how to go about execution. Managers of different plants of a company have to be taught the importance of execution. They should be able to go to the bottom of the problem and find out the reasons and not just try to rectify it. For a company to be set up, certain points have to be taken into mind: What does the business want to achieve? Set achievable targets accordingly Quarterly reviews should be formed Reasons for the lag should be targeted (if any)

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Learning From the Book

Disciplines like leadership development, strategy and innovation are the aspects which are linked to a successful business and getting things done actually is not being considered usually. But the authors of the book demonstrate that the main difference between a successful and a failed company is, in fact, the ability to execute. Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and making it happen is the leaders most important job. While failure in todays business is often attributed to other cause, the authors argue that the major cause is the absence of execution Execution is a discipline to learn and not mere the tactical part of the business. Implementation of strategy requires integration among people, strategy and the operation process. People are important as strategy is implemented by execution of process by them. A manager should have courage and emotional fortitude to face the situation and take appropriate decision A robust people process provides a powerful framework for determining the organizations talent needs over time, and for planning actions that will meet those needs. For a strategy to be effective, it has to be considered and owned by those who will execute it. Strategy review should be interactive and inclusive and should include leaders from all the key players. The strategy process defines where a business wants to go, and the people process defines whos going to get it there. The operating plan provides the path for those people. It breaks long-term output into short-term targets.

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