Execution is Everything

As people say a step walked is better than miles planned. In this Blog I will discuss about the book I just finished:
“EXECUTION – The Discipline of getting things done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

I am very impressed with the book and this book bit of a text bookish but takes you on the journey of how to actually draw strategies and operations and then a operations plan with deadlines and responsibilities and explain how to draw a budget and even revenue forecast based on this rather than the other way round.

Infact that’s what we do to at S7 Software – we first write down the objectives, then get the strategies on how to achieve these objectives and then action items for each strategy and a resource name against each action item and then a timeline for each action item. Once set we use this to derive the expected revenues for the next year and also budgets. Of course while we do this we even bring in the resource strength and the skill set and then basically modify, few trade-offs happen and we finalize the whole plan before March (end of the current financial year) for the next financial year and meet every quarter to do a “progress-check” and realign the strategy if required based on the realities and market condition and proceed for the next quarter. (Thanks to our mentor Anal Jain who introduced this to us).
If you guys are doing this anyways, I say read the book as a reference to make sure you are on the track and may be fine tune here and there. If this is *not* how you plan your year, I strongly recommend to get a copy pronto and read and understand every point the author makes and try to follow it up and you will be surprised to see the results you see in your organization.
Anyway below are my highlights of the book and in no way these highlights will replace reading the book but I am hoping that these highlights might actually make people pick up a copy and read the whole book. Ok here are the highlights:
A step walked is better than miles talked so is what this book talks about – unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they are pointless.
• Execution is a discipline, and integral to strategy
• Execution is the major job of the business leader
• Execution must be a core element of an organization’s culture.
The heart of the execution lies in the three core processes: the people process, the strategy process, and the operations process. An organization can execute only if the leader’s heart and soul are immersed in the company. Those who these processes in depth fare dramatically better than those who just think they do. Execution has to be part of the organization’s culture. Organizations don’t execute unless the right people, individually and collectively, focus on the right details at the right time. As per authors here are the leader’s seven essential behaviours:
• Know your people and business
• Insist on realism
• Set clear goals and priorities
• Follow through
• Reward the doers
• Expand people’s capabilities
• Know yourself
Coaching is the single most important part of expanding others capabilities. “Give man a fish and you would have fed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you will feed him for lifetime”. Learning comes best from working on real business problems.
A solid, long term leader has an ethical frame of reference that gives her the power and energy to carry out even the most difficult assignment. This characteristic is beyond honesty or beyond integrity, beyond treating people with dignity. It’s a business leadership ethic. Putting the right people in the right jobs require emotional fortitude. Failing to have this is considered as emotional weakness which eventually will destroy both the leader and the organization.
The foundation of changing behaviour is linking rewards to performance and making the linkages transparent. As Larry’s puts it, “differentiation is the mother’s milk of building performance culture”. You cannot have an execution culture with robust dialogue – one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candour and informality. A good motto to observe is “truth over harmony”. Formality suppresses dialogue; informality encourages it. A good leader is one with vision, strategy, and the ability to inspire others. They are the ones who energize people, are decisive on tough issues, get things done through others, and follow through as second nature.
People process:
If you don’t get the people process right, you will never fulfil the potential of your business. Analyzing succession depth and retention risk are the essence of talent planning and building a leadership pipeline of high potential people. Identifying high potential and promotable people avoids two dangers – one is organizational inertia – keeping people in the same jobs for too long and the other is moving people up too quickly. Preserving the dignity of the people who leave jobs is an important part of reinforcing the positive nature of the performance culture.

Strategy process:
If the strategy does not address the how’s, it is a candidate for failure. The strategy should not be disconnected from both external and internal realities. It should also have alternative plans on what if a given strategy goes wrong. A strong strategic plan must address the following questions:
• What is the assessment of external environment?
• How well do you understand the existing customers and markets?
• What is the best way to grow the business profitably, and what are the obstacles to growth?
• Who is the competition? • Can the business execute strategy?
• Are the short term and long term balanced?
• What are the important milestones for executing the plan?
• What are the critical issues facing the business?
• How will the business make money on a sustainable basis?
A good strategic plan is adaptable. A strategy review has to be done on a regular basis and one needs to raise some of the important questions such as below and change the strategy and the course of action accordingly;
• How well versed is each business unit team about the competition?
• How strong is the organizational capability to execute the strategy?
• Is the plan scattered or sharply focussed?
• Are we choosing the right ideas?
• Are the linkages with people and operations clear?
Every strategy has to be examined and reviewed to make sure that it will not dilute our focus on our original market segment, to the extent that we could lose the golden goose that is to fund the new segments.

Operations Process:
An operating plan has to be created based on the strategies listed. It looks forward to the hows – the action part. The leader is primarily responsible for overseeing the seamless transition from strategy to operations. Generally the operating plan will have quarter-by-quarter action steps. Operating plan ties a thread through people, strategy and operations. Budgeting should not be independent and operating plan made to fit into the budget – it should be the other way round. The budget should be the financial expression of the operating plan.
Synchronization is essential for excellence in execution and for energizing the corporation. It means that all moving parts of the organization have common assumptions about the external environment over the operating year and a common understanding. You cannot set realistic goals until you’ve debated the assumptions behind them. They need to be tested either by going to customers or some other source which is valid. With this kind of information, the group can make intelligent trade-offs based on reality which is crucial in an operating review. We not only need to look at our customers but also at their customers and many a times at their customers’ customer too. They are ultimately who define or determine the demand for their products. Once the assumptions are pinned down, the next step in the operations process is to build the operating plan itself. It is a three part process that begins with setting the targets and then you develop the action plans, including making necessary trade-offs between short-term objectives and long term goals.
Once all is done, actions are assigned to people with timelines and follow-through measures are established to make sure people are meeting their commitments. The operating plan should cover all major programs for the coming year for which it is planned, such as marketing and sales, production, functional operations, capital spending and so on. One outcome of the operations process is identifying targets that clearly and specifically reflect not only what a business wants to achieve but what it is likely to achieve. Operations process builds confidence as the team after going through the whole planning, knows that they can meet the targets.
as usual, would love to hear your feedback.
Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software

More on Mentorship

Probably the most read blog of mine was on mentorship. I got lot of replies and comments direct to my inbox (in total 40) – thank you all so much for the feedback. One thing stood out in all the comments was for me to name the mentor and in fact I did not name him for two reasons, first the objective of the blog was to create awareness on the mentorship and their advantages rather than the “mentor’ itself and again I hadn’t taken permission per say from my mentors (Why I am using the plural word here, I will come back to it soon ) to name them but now that almost everyone asked me to reveal their names and I did go back to my mentors for their approval and have got it, let me introduce them here.

The person who I referred in my other Blog is Anal Jain. Mr Jain has more than 30 years of experience in top management positions in major international IT firms’ right from leading WIPRO’s InfoTech’s marketing to building and leading IBM’s business in India after their re-entry into the country. Starting his career in early 1970s with IBM India, Anal has been a part of the India IT success story, steering companies through unchartered waters and with fabulous success. Anal was a topper throughout in his B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and holds Master degree from Brooklyn Poly, New York, USA. Today he is very actively involved with the mentorship via NASSCOM and TiE.

We spend together almost a complete day once every month in the office reviewing the past progress, analyzing the current market and strategizing based on any changed conditions in the market. When we do this micro level analysis his feedback and his ideas are amazing and helps us thoroughly – basically they have been there, done that and achieved success and their guidance, planning and help in the crucial junctures are compared to none. Let me take this opportunity to thank anal for agreeing to me our mentor and spending lot of hours with us inspite of his busy schedule, - Thanks Anal for all your help, we all appreciate it.

Let me step back, digress a bit and go back to the questions and feedback I got, and there were lot of questions on how to select a mentor to can anyone be a good mentor and should the mentor be local. To answer the first one, like how all project managers are not the best so as in mentorship too – you need to be careful on who works the best for you and with whom the chemistry is right (of the mentor and the management). A lot of home work has to be done to find out which spot is your Achilles heel and then find a mentor who is strong in that area. At S7 Software when we started we knew that our sweet spot is technology and when have great engineers but our weak spot was Sales and Marketing and in general the whole experience of Entrepreneurship as such. So those are the areas which we concentrated on to find mentors.
The other question was whether the mentor has to be local or we can still derive a lot of advantages even if the mentor is not local. To answer that question let me talk about a bit about our experience. When we started I went to another successful entrepreneur (and a serial entrepreneur) called Aki (I haven’t taken his permission yet and hence won’t reveal everything of him yet :-) ) who was responsible for setting up many firms in the US (in Bay Area) and all of them were sold successfully to bigger firms and then now he is back again to what he knows best – starting a new venture. He is a very busy man but encouraged and gave me lot of tips on how to start and how to tackle initial issues as they crop up while we grow. Today we are mentored by another great strategist who resides in the Bay Area (California), United States. His name is Dr. Shyam Johari, worked as Vice President for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – America, worked for Compaq (Tandem) as Director of Product Performance, System Integration, and India Software Development for NonStop Division and with Burroughs (Unisys) in various management roles. Dr. Johari holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Chicago.

We call him once every month and spend atleast couple of hours going over the metrics, results achieved and what needs to be done for the next quarter, next half year and next year so that we are on track. He is very good in analyzing the US market and he pretty much our eyes and ears in the US and gives us lot of feedback and ideas and of course brings in lot of contacts too. We also get to meet him every time one of the top management goes to US (which is almost 6 times a year). We report our earnings every Quarter to Shyam like say Infosys or Wipro does for the stock market. Because we do this we are very disciplined in this and we know even though we are a privately held firm we cannot behave like that and we use Shyam as the per say “Stock market” and every quarter we have to be prepared with answers for the tough question he (substitute with Market) asks us after we announce the results. We have been practising this of announcing our quarterly results to Shyam (and to all our employees) and sort of getting prepared to announce to the market one day when we go IPO – too big a dream right? Why not? Just because we are a small firm let’s not act like one is our mantra and only time will tell us how we succeed. I hope with Shyam’s example I have given how actually having a non-local mentor you can actually convert the fact to your advantage. Again let me take this opportunity to thank Shyam too – Shyam, thank you so much and your help (as you are aware of it) has been exemplary.

To end the note, I don’t think I have done a complete justice in mentioning all the help and advice our mentors have provided with especially in critical junctures. I have recorded as much as I could recollect but if I have to mention all another five sheets won’t be enough to be frank. My main intention behind this blog was not to either glorify my mentors or my company but to throw light on the “Mentorship” as such which is very common in the western world and in India still is in its infancy I feel and from my experience (whatever small it is) lot of entrepreneurs feel that somehow they know all and are hesitant to involve mentors and also they have lot of apprehension in a way that how can someone from outside can come and help. This is a myth and in reality everyone should try mentorship and at any stage every company is always looking to get that quantum jump to the next stage and a mentorship at that level will be very helpful and handy (irrespective of what level your firm is). Hope this blog has been educative as well as eye opener. As again please send me your feedback irrespective of whether you agree with me or not – it is always great to see another perspective.