Loading ...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
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Comments
Awesome. I strongly believe in planning, coaching, Follow up and re-engineering for successful results. I will surely read this book. Thanks
100% right…as often we feel let us first land a contract, then we could hire techies and business analyst to carry out delivery….often without a robust delivery team, we miss points in the contract for want of due diligence and spend 3 times more to close the delivery…..
More often in SMEs circle where low hanging fruits are ever tempting…..Great piece
Very well said about execution . But in your article you have covered all phases of project management lifecycle . You have stated with defining your objectives , planning it , executing it and check for meeting those objective which equally amounts to doing full project management life cycle not a phase of it
Thanks a lot, Its amazing , I am very eager to read more…
Yeah I agree completely, execution is most important, but is the amount of planning it talks about, possible at seed stage of a startup? With so much of dynamic and unknown resources how should one plan to achieve similar goals?
It would be great if you can throw some light on same topic, considering startups at seed stage.