The Bookbuzz Book

of
Business Execution

Yanky Fachler

The Varsity Press

 2011 Yanky Fachler

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 907 522321

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, without
written permission of the publisher. Such written permission must also
be obtained before any part of this publication is stored in a retrieval
system of any nature. Requests for permission should be directed to
Yanky Fachler, 10 Kilgar, Jocelyn Street, Dundalk, Ireland,
yanky@eircom.net.

Published by The Varsity Press (www.thevarsitypress.com)

in association with Bookbuzz (www.bookbuzz.biz)
Printed in Ireland by Gemini International

Contents
Introduction
1. Execution: The Discipline of getting things done by Larry
Bossidy and Ram Charan
2. Execution Plain and Simple: 12 Steps to Achieving Any Goal
on Time and on Budget by Robert Neiman
3. Results Rule: Build a Culture That Blows the Competition
Away by Randy Pennington
4. Making It All Work: Winning at the game of work and the
business of life by David Allen
5. Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and
Change by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak
6. Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It
Done by MStrategy Execution Heroes: Business Strategy
Implementation and Strategic Management Demystified by
8. Beyond Strategy: The Leader's Role in Successful
Implementation by Robin Speculand
9. The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for
Competitive Advantage by Robert Kaplan and David Norton
10. Executing strategy Harvard Business Press Pocket Mentor
11. Closing the Execution Gap: How Great Leaders and Their
Companies Get Results by Richard Lepsinger
12. Get it Done! A blueprint for business execution by Ralph
Welborn and Vince Kasten
The 33 Strategies of Execution

Business books by Yanky Fachler

Bookbuzz Insights 2011
The Bookbuzz Book of Biz Book Insights 2009
Chutzpah: unlocking the maverick mindset for success
Fire in the Belly an exploration of the entrepreneurial mindset
th

Fire in the Belly revised 10 anniversary edition

Should I, Shouldnt I (start my own business?)
My Family Doesnt Understand Me: coping strategies for
entrepreneurs
The Selling Conversation, co-authored with Dermot McConkey
What did we do right? Global perspectives on Irelands miracle
(chapter on enterprise and innovation)
History/biography books by Yanky Fachler
6 Officers, 2 Lions and 750 Mules
The Vow: Rebuilding the Fachler tribe after the Holocaust

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Yoda in Star Wars

Culture eats strategy for lunch, every day.

Dick Clark, CEO, Merck

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at

the results.
Winston Churchill

The importance of corporate strategy is often overrated.

Operational excellence at the business-unit level is
fundamental.
James E. Ashton, Frank X. Cook Jr., and Paul Schmitz

Companies that rely too heavily on creativity flame out. In

many ways, execution is more important.
Howard Anderson

Without strategy, execution is aimless.

Without execution, strategy is useless.
Morris Chang

INTRODUCTION
Strategy or execution - which is more important?
This is a bit of a chicken vs. egg argument, but there is emerging
agreement that while strategy explains 15% of a companys
performance, the execution of the strategy explains 85%.
In the business literature (both offline and online), the amount of
content available is massively skewed towards strategy.
Execution as an integral part of the business process continues to
receive too little attention.
Traditionally, the world has been divided into two groups of
people, positioned on opposite sides of a chasm: those who can
think strategically and come up with new concepts, and those
who can implement others' ideas. Undoubtedly, we need both
types of people, and without the other, neither group would be of
much value to a results-oriented organization.
However, managers often cannot get these two groups to work
together effectively.
We've all seen the charismatic CEO who is a great communicator,
a visionary, a leader in all respects, but who has an organization
rife with operating problems, miscommunication, and an inability
to respond to competitive pressures.

And weve all seen people who can focus on the tasks at hand but
have trouble seeing the big picture. In an environment with
continually changing corporate messages and strategies,
productivity comes to a halt unless you have people with both
conceptual and practical qualities.
An over-emphasis on strategic planning is like sitting down and
drawing up plans for your dream house without consulting a
contractor. You may devise the most elaborate, modern,
attractive home, but what about reality? When you deliver your
plans to the contractor, you may find it is going to cost twice as
much and take three times as long as you thought, and that some
of your plans are not achievable.
Thats why you need to have both tacticians and strategists in
attendance at planning sessions. The presence of both will
anchor the outcome of such planning sessions in reality and will
improve the chances for success.
One of the problems with strategic planning is that it often
involves too much intellectualizing and philosophizing.
Companies can be so busy with their visions and plans for success
that they leave too little time to focus on implementation.
There are many reasons for this. Compared with strategy,
execution can appear downright unsexy. Execution is the ugly
duckling paddling alongside such regal swans as strategic
planning, total quality management, or e-anything.
Yet nothing is more basic and more crucial to success than
execution. The loftiest goals and the most creative strategies can
easily be undone by poor execution.

In an article in the June 2008 Harvard Business Review, The

Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution, Neilson, Martin and
Powers present the top 10 traits of organizational effectiveness,
based on 26,000 respondents in 31 companies.
1. Everyone has a good idea of the decisions and actions for
which he or she is responsible.
2. Important information about the competitive
environment gets to headquarters quickly.
3. Once made, decisions are rarely second-guessed.
4. Information flows freely across organizational boundaries.
5. Field and line employees usually have the information
they need to understand the impact of their choices.
6. Line managers have access to the metrics they need to
measure the key drivers of their business.
7. Managers up the line get involved in operating decisions.
8. Conflicting messages are rarely sent to the market.
9. The individual performance-appraisal process
differentiates among high, adequate, and low performers.
10. The ability to deliver on performance commitments
strongly influences career advancement and
compensation.
There are several ways of avoiding the pitfalls that can impede
the success of execution.

Do not confuse strategy with vision, mission or objectives.

Get used to making distinctive, tough choices, and dont
keep options open.
Avoid analysis paralysis.
Remember that your organisations culture and values,
measurement and incentives, people, structure and
processes all determine the underlying environment.

Gain peoples emotional commitment to the strategy, and

explain to them why successful execution of this strategy
is important to the organisation and the individual.

In todays competitive environment, where product and service

offerings, tactics, buzz phrases and technologies are increasingly
interchangeable, the only thing differentiates you from your
competition is organisational culture.
Organisational culture is a set of intangible organizational beliefs,
assumptions and values that either support or undermine your
companys commitment to results and ability to deliver. In an
increasingly commoditized marketplace, a culture of execution
will always beat strategy.
How best to utilise Bookbuzz: All the books featured in The
Bookbuzz Book of Business Execution have been chosen because
they provide hands-on practical ideas geared solely towards
creating a culture of execution in your organisation.
All the books share the core assumption that the vast majority of
strategies simply dont get executed. Which is why we suggest
that when you are ready to venture beyond the strategy stage
and embrace the execution stage, you choose which of the
approaches described below best fits your needs and
preferences.
The next stage is to hand a copy of your preferred book(s) to
every member of your team of key executives responsible for
implementing your strategy. Next, invite Bookbuzz to conduct
facilitated discussion sessions with your executives based on the
book(s) of your choice. This will ensure that you fulfil the prime
condition for successful execution a culture of execution shared
by all the stakeholders.

Execution: The Discipline of getting things done

By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

The fundamental problem is that people think of execution as the

tactical side of business, something to be delegated by leaders
while thy focus on the perceived bigger issues. This is wrong.
Execution is not just tactics - it is a discipline and a system that
has to be built into a companys strategy, its goals, and its

culture. Execution is a specific set of behaviours and techniques

that companies need to master in order to have competitive
advantage.
No worthwhile strategy can be planned without taking into
account the organizations ability to execute it. Execution is a
systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. The heart of
execution lies in the three core processes:

the people process

the strategy process
the operations process.

An organization can execute only if the leaders heart and soul

are immersed in the company. How people talk to each other
absolutely determines how well the organization will function.
Leading for execution is not about micromanaging or being
hands-on, or disempowering people. Its about active
involvementdoing the things leaders should be doing in the
first place.
Leaders who execute look for deviations from desired managerial
tolerances - the gap between the desired and actual outcome in
everything from profit margins to the selection of people for
promotion. Then they move to close the gap and raise the bar
still higher across the whole organization.
A business culture defines what gets appreciated, respected,
and, ultimately, rewarded; those rewards and their linkage to
performance are the foundation of changing behaviour. If a
company rewards and promotes people for execution, its culture
will change. However your organization determines rewards, the

goal should be the same - your compensation and reward system

must have the right yields. Dont reward simply on strong
achievements on numbers, but also on the desirable behaviours
that people adopt. Over time, your people will get stronger, as
will your financial results.
Be specific. Ask yourself: what sort of behaviour is acceptable /
unacceptable in your company?
The Leaders Essential Behaviours

Know yourself, know your people and your business.

Insist on Realism.
Set Clear Goals and Priorities. Leaders who execute focus
on fewer (3-4) priorities.
Follow Through.
Act decisively
Expand People's Capabilities through Coaching.
Speak simply and directly.
Simplify things so that others can understand them,
evaluate them, and act on them
Reward the Doers. If you want people to produce specific
results, you must reward them accordingly. When
companies dont execute, chances are they dont
measure, dont reward, and dont promote people who
know how to get things done.
Encourage emotional fortitude:
Authenticity: Real, not fake. Outer person
is the same as inner person
Self-Awareness: Know thyself. Selfawareness gives you the capacity to learn
from your mistakes as well as your
successes.

Self-Mastery: When you know yourself,

you can master yourself. You can keep your
ego in check, take responsibility for your
behavior, embrace new ideas. You can take
risks, and relish hiring people who are
smarter than you.
Humility: the more you can contain your
ego, the more realistic you are about your
problems.

The Importance of Robust Dialogue

An execution culture demands robust dialogue - which starts
when people go in with open minds. Theyre not trapped by
preconceptions or armed with a private agenda. Formality
suppresses dialogue; informality encourages it. Formal
conversations and presentations leave little room for debate.
They suggest that everything is scripted and predetermined.
Informal dialogue is open. It invites questions, encouraging
spontaneity and critical thinking. Robust dialogue ends with
closure. At the end of the meeting, people agree about what each
person has to do and when. Theyve committed to it in an open
forum; they are accountable for the outcomes.
A Robust People Process: the Right People in the Right Place

Evaluates individuals accurately and in depth.

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.

Fills the leadership pipeline thats the basis of a strong

succession plan.
Has the Right People in the Right Place, and doesnt rely
on staff appraisals that focus on the wrong criteria, or on
fuzzy and meaningless recommendations.
Has the courage to tackle non-performers
Has the emotional fortitude to confront non-performers

Many jobs are filled with the wrong people because the leaders
who promote them are comfortable with them. Its natural for
executives to develop a sense of loyalty to those theyve worked
with over time, particularly if theyve come to trust their
judgments. When the right people are not in the right jobs, the
problem is visible and transparent.
Leaders know intuitively that they have a problem and will often
readily acknowledge it. Some leaders drain energy from people.
Other leaders energise their people.
Why are the right people not in the right jobs?

Lack of knowledge. Leaders often rely on sometimes

fuzzy or prejudiced staff appraisals when placing people
into positions. They should, instead, define the job in
terms of its three or four nonnegotiable criteria things
the person must be able to do to succeed.
Lack of courage. There are innumerable cases of the
wrong person being kept in the wrong job, simply because
the persons leader doesnt have the emotional fortitude
to take decisive action, confront the person, and make a
change. Such failures do considerable damage to a
business; indeed, if the non-performer is high enough in
the organization, he or she can be particularly destructive.

The psychological comfort factor. Many jobs are filled

with the wrong people because the leaders who promote
them are comfortable with them, and the employees are
loyal to those leaders. However, if that loyalty is based on
the wrong factors (social reasons, rather than
professional, etc.), it could be damaging. Often, breaking
free of this comfort factor is exactly what a leader must do
to bring about change.

Follow Through: the cornerstone of execution:

Never finish a meeting without clarifying what the followthrough will be, who will do it, when and how they will do
it, what resources they will use, and how and when the
next review will take place and with whom.
Never launch an initiative unless youre personally
committed to it and prepared to see it through until its
embedded in the DNA of an organization.

A strong Strategic Plan must address the following questions:

What is the assessment of the external environment?

How well do you understand the existing customers and
markets?
What are the obstacles to growth?
Who is the competition?
Can the business execute the strategy?
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?

How to Conduct a Strategy Review

The review should be a creative exercise, not a drill where

people regurgitate data. If creativity is absent from the
conversation, the participants might as well stay in their
offices.
People have to leave with closure to the discussion and
clear accountability for their parts in the plan, and the
leader must follow through to be sure that everyone is
clear about the outcome of the review.
The strategy review is also a good place for a leader to
learn about and develop people.
Youll find out about their strategic-thinking capabilities,
both as individuals and as a group.

Questions to Raise at a Strategy Review

What are our competitors planning to do to serve their

customer segments and prevent us from serving them?
How good are their sales forces?
What are our competitors doing to increase market share?
How will they respond to our product offerings?
What acquisitions will our key competitors make that will
affect us?
Could a competitor form an alliance and attack our
segment?
What new people have competitors added that could alter
the competitive landscape?
How Strong is the Organization Capability to Execute the
Strategy?
Do we have the sales force and sales engineers to win in
the new market segments, or are they yesterdays
people?

Do we know the technology and have a roadmap of how it

will change over time?
Do we have a cost structure that will allow us to compete
profitably?
Is the Plan Scattered or Sharply Focused?
Is the plan too ambitious?
What are our priorities to avoid fragmentation of effort?
Are We Choosing the Right Ideas?
Is this idea consistent with the realities of the
marketplace?
Does it mesh with our organizations capabilities?
Are we pursuing more ideas than we can handle?
Will the idea make money?

CASE STUDY: Making the Link with Strategy and People

Your boss has asked you to drive from Chicago to Okaloosa,
Iowa, a journey of 317 miles. Hes prepared a budget for you with
clear metrics. You can spend no more than $16 on gas, you must
arrive in 5 hours and 37 minutes, and you cant drive over 60miles
per hour. But no one has map with a route to Oskaloosa, and you
dont know whether youll run into a snowstorm on the way.
Ludicrous?
No more so than the way many companies translate their
strategic plans into operations. 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.

The Importance of Synchronization

Synchronization means that all the moving parts of the
organization have common assumptions about the external
environment over the operating year. The left hand knows what
the right hand is doing.
CASE STUDY: GMs Synchronized Response to 9/11
The events of 9/11 created real concern in Detroit that demand
for vehicles would significantly decrease. In response, Ron
Zarella, General Motors vice president for North America,
conceived of zero percent financing, and implementing it put
demand into high gear.
His timing was perfect in November, the Federal Reserve
reduced interest rates to a 40-year low of 1.75 percent.
Consumers were able to refinance and gain cash for down
payments, which sent demand skyrocketing. The move required
an operating plan to reprogram and reallocate resources to
synchronize GMs various moving parts, helping the company
determine what kinds of vehicles to build, in which plants, and
where to send them, how much advertising money the company
should spend, where they should spend it, and on which
products.
Synchronizing production and advertising was crucial with
margins cut by the zero percent financing, an imbalance between
production and advertising would both lose sales and raise costs.
The program opened up a big opportunity for GM. Though other
automakers joined the financing bandwagon, GMs swift
execution and pinpoint synchronization gave the company an
immediate boost in market share.

The Processes of Execution

Break your strategy down into manageable near-,

medium- and long-term goals.
Determine kinds of skills you need for the upcoming goals
and start laying the foundations early.
Then design an action plan for each step of your big plan.
Develop a leadership pipeline through continuous
improvement, succession depth and reducing retention
risk
Meeting your goals depends on the quality of your people.
Assess potential leaders via The Leadership Assessment
Summary, The Continuous Improvement Summary,
Succession Depth, and Reducing Retention Risk Analysis.
Non-performers are people who aren't meeting their
established goals.
Sometimes you just need to coach a person to get them
better acquainted with a job.
Sometimes they just need to be transferred to another
division or responsibility that's better suited to their
capabilities.
Other times there's no choice but to let him go - in a
manner that allows the person to keep his dignity.
When creating strategies, consider not only the current
realities of all relevant factors, but also unexpectedif
unlikelyturns of events.
There must always be backup plans, or at least people
who can quickly think up alternative plans to make the
best of a botched situation.
Adaptability to change should always be a consideration:
constantly review your plan to see if it is being executed
properly, if current and future steps are still feasible, and if
the people in charge are still getting results.

Building the Operating Plan

Set realistic targets based on track records and histories.

Develop action and contingency plans: Study the possible
outcomes that might leave the company most vulnerable
and base your contingency plan on that. In other words,
plan for the worst.
Get agreement and closure from all participants:
Communicate agreed-upon goals to the people
concerned after the meeting, to reiterate your
expectations and what they promised to deliver.

Outcomes of the Operations Process

Think carefully: what does your business want to achieve

vis--vis what your company is likely to achieve?
Watch how the operations affect your company,
especially for the need to reallocate resources.
Conduct quarterly reviews to see if you're still on track,
who's keeping you there, and if you should even be there
in the first place

Execution Plain and Simple: 12 Steps to

Achieving Any Goal on Time and on Budget
by Robert Neiman
The underlying assumption of execution is that your own sense of
responsibility and your initiative will be the driving forces of
achieving your goals. All the tools and techniques work only in
the hands of a responsible initiator. If you are managing an effort,
it means you have the responsibility for its success.

If you are party to an effort and see an error being made or an

opportunity to do something better, you raise the issue and do
something constructive about it.
Taking responsibility and initiative is not a problem for managers
in complex organisations who have a clear assignment,
enthusiasm about tackling the assignment, plenty of people and
resources available to help, and who feel confident they can carry
it off.
Mental preparedness:

If you are a senior manager, you will be conceiving major

directions and calling upon others to create work
programmes and specific projects. You will be acting as a
sponsor.
If you are a middle manager, you might be creating the
work programmes and projects.
If you are a front-line manager, or are leading a specific
project yourself, you'll be a project leader.
If you are a staff person or facilitator, you'll be providing
the support.
If you are a participant, you'll be carrying out specific
tasks."

Define your assignment in writing:

A good assignment generates a spark, enthusiasm, a

spring to your step.
A good assignment spells out what you need to
accomplish and gives you some guidance on how to
proceed."

Things you cant do without:

Focus your organisation on the few most crucial goals.

Organise your core team
Create a strategy
Get input and support from key players
Hold a compelling kick-off event to create momentum
Make all the pieces fit by using plans, schedules, budgets
and controls
Make demands effectively
Follow up like crazy without driving people crazy.
Use political skills to win constituents and overcome
opposition
Use creative problem-solving to overcome unforeseen
risks, delays and obstacles
Manage an intense push to get the final results and
rewards
Capture and spread what you learn.

Lessons to be learned from crises:

Just think how much more organisations produce in a

crisis than under normal conditions.
Crises reveal for an instant the extraordinary execution
capability not visible before.
People rally round and do whatever it takes to deal with
the situation.
Nothing has changed except the urgency and importance
of the challenge

12 steps of execution:
1. Take responsibility. Someone will need to be responsible
for each idea to be implemented. This means taking the
initiative to achieve specific objectives and tasks needed
to see the idea through to fruition.
2. The idea must be defined in writing, ideally in a
memorandum that specifies the outcome, individuals
involved, general timeframe, and the evaluation criteria
to periodically report the progress being made. This
becomes the assignment that is agreed upon before
starting the project.
3. Put together a good core team to help develop a solid
strategy that will become the basic approach used to
implement the plan of action that identifies the resources
needed, clarifies roles of the team members, and possible
risks and actions to avoid.
4. Take the summary and get input from key players so the
strategy can be refined. This will help get agreement from
those who have bought into the project, and it will
identify challenges before you start. With this insight
you'll be able to determine the feasibility of the project
and make adjustments early in the process before you've
committed a lot of time, energy, and money into it.
5. Take action and create momentum by holding a
compelling launch event. Starting off with an event gets
everyone's attention, signals that this project is special,
gets the team focused on the project, and lets the team
know that others are aware of it and will be watching.

6. Spell out the specific tasks in writing. Team members

need to know how they can contribute toward the project
completion. This step also includes periodically reporting
on the progress of the project through a weekly or
monthly written progress report. When everything is
running smoothly, the reports will be brief; however, the
written report can also help identify problems and get the
necessary support to keep the project moving forward.
7. Make demands effectively. Demands allow you to keep
the project moving, establish a sense of control, and help
create a sense of urgency. Effective demands are
mandates that inspire people to do better and take
personal accountability for the completion of the project.
8. Follow up like crazy without driving people crazy in the
process. Make personal site visits to reinforce and
advance the project. Follow up lets those responsible
know that there's high interest in the progress of the
assignment.
9. Win constituents and overcome opposition. As you're
making progress on your project, there will inevitably be
some snags along the way. Identifying your allies and
getting their support will help overcome any political
snafus that might occur.
10. Use creative problem solving to overcome unforeseen
risks, delays, and obstacles. This requires brainstorming to
develop options and then identify the best alternative.
Specify the problem or issue and the factors that appear
to be the root causes of the problem.

11. Push to get the final results and recognize the effort made
by the team. You started off with a launch, now end the
project with another event where team members are
recognized, and possibly rewarded.
12. Capture the lessons learned and disseminate your
knowledge in a systematic manner so that others can
benefit. This can be accomplished by asking this basic
question in the assessment process: Did we fully
accomplish all that we set out to accomplish?

Results Rule: Build a Culture That Blows the

Competition Away
by Randy Pennington

Many business books tell us that in order to change our

performance, we need to change our culture. No, says the
author. We need to change the performance in order to change
the culture. Values and assumptions drive behaviour. Behaviour
becomes habit. Habits drive an execution culture focused on
results.

Has-beens and wannabes deny marketplace realities, distort their

performance, and delude themselves into blaming their lousy
results on everyone but themselves.
Heroes embrace an execution culture:
o An alignment of individual, team and
departmental performance with the organizations
strategic business objectives.
o Continuous improvement and innovation at every
level of the organization.
Execution cultures choose to:
o Tell themselves the truth.
o Pursue the best over the easiest.
o Leverage the power of internal and external
partnerships
o Focus their energy on priorities.
o Show the courage of accountability.
o Learn, grow and improve every day.
Trust:

An absence of trust has a measurable impact on

performance, morale, open communication and the
ability to retain top people.
Without trust, your colleagues, associates and customers
will not help you succeed.
Avoid:
o Lack of follow-through on commitments made
o Openness of communication
o Amount and availability of communication
o Incompetent or poor decision making
o Incompetent job performance

(Dishonesty does not show up until number six on the list.)

Connecting Purpose and Goals:

Hoshin Kanri = Japanese term meaning management and

control of the organizations strategic direction:
o Top management sets the overall vision, annual
strategic objectives and measures the success
based on critical business needs and an honest
assessment of current realities.
o Each level of the company moving vertically and
horizontally develops the goals and ensures
alignment with strategic objectives.
o Work processes are adjusted to achieve the
targets.
o Every associate receives information on how the
company is performing, how the division is
performing and how each team is performing
versus the companys objectives.
o Processes are evaluated and refined to ensure
results are achieved.

Inspect what you expect - If its important, measure it:

What performance must we deliver and results must we

achieve to make us valuable to our customers and
profitable in the marketplace?
What behaviours must we demonstrate to live our values?
What must we learn today in order to be better
tomorrow?

Personal and organizational accountability:

Leadership is the art of influencing the actions and

outcomes of others to achieve results.

The members of your team know if you are accountable

or not when results are on the line.
And those doing a good job appreciate it when those who
are not performing are held accountable.
Fear prevents us from confronting performance that does
not meet expectations.
Tough decisions about performance do not require brutal
conversations.

Maintaining a sense of urgency:

Generate creative tension.

Ensure that important stuff continues.
Set the stage for the future.
Respect the past.
Recognize this day will end.

Creating an execution culture:

Culture can be an anchor or an accelerator.

Build an execution culture that continually anticipates and
adapts.
An execution culture demands a deep passion for
competing, contributing and winning.
An execution culture means being dissatisfied with the
status quo, always reinventing and never resting on your
laurels.

Lets read some books together. Lets have

conversations about these books. But most
importantly, lets put those ideas into action.
Randy Pennington

Making It All Work: Winning at the game of

work and the business of life
by David Allen

This follow-up to Allens GTD (Getting Things Done) book

presents a complete and current inventory of commitments
organized and reviewed in a systematic way so as to sharpen
focus and allow for wiser decision making. Allen guides readers
through the process of obtaining control and perspective,
organizing tasks and goals to reach the holy grail of an empty in-

basket and e-mail inbox. Making It All Work addresses how to

figure out where you are in life and what you need; how to be
your own consultant and a CEO of your life; moving from hope to
trust in decision-making; when not to set goals; harnessing
intuition, spontaneity, and serendipity; and why life is like
business and business is like life.
GTD (getting things done) book is not a time management
system but an attention management system, a framework for
helping us focus our attention where it belongs at any particular
moment. The alternative is scattered attention, lost focus, and
ultimately minimal productivity. The goal is to establish a set of
habits and practices that allow one to respond gracefully to new
inputs and to instinctively place ones attention where it will do
the most good.
This book focuses on 2 core concepts:

Self-management - managing yourself as if you're your

own employee. You manage yourself best when you
maximize both perspective and control.
Control over attention - the true source of productivity.

6 things need organizing:

1. Outcomes: High-level personal statements (e.g. your
vision of yourself in 5-10 years, your principles)
2. Actions: The lists and other material that drive your daily
activities, including your next actions, your waiting for
list to remind you of work deferred to others, and your
calendar detailing what needs to get done when.
3. Incubating: Someday/maybe projects and actions
4. Support: Planning documents and collateral material

5. Reference: Documents, research material, articles, and

other stuff that is not needed for current projects but
which may prove useful for future projects.
6. Trash: Everything that doesnt have a place in your life
right now.
Engaging: At any given moment, you must be able to focus fully
on the one task that is the single most important thing you could
be doing right now. The work of defining, scheduling, assessing,
and preparing for the actual action is already taken care of
leaving you free from moment to moment to pursue the
particular action that is most appropriate for that moment.
The primary question is: Is what Im doing right now the most
important thing I could be doing in my life? Allen uses the
metaphor of a plane ascending from the runway to its cruising
altitude at 50,000 feet:

Runway Next Actions. This is where you actually do

things.

10,000 Feet Projects. The process of achieving any

short-term (under a year) goal that requires more than
two steps to complete. Most of us can expect to have
from 30 to 100 projects at any given moment. Index
projects on a master list, and review weekly to make sure
you are on top of them.

20,000 Feet Areas of Focus. Distinguishing between the

various hats you wear (marketing specialist, manager)

30,000 Feet Goals and Objectives. The action of goals

isnt in the goals themselves but in the projects and next
actions they generate.

40,000 Feet Vision. If you were wildly successful in the

coming years, what do you imagine or see yourself doing
or being? Your answer to that question is your vision. Ask
yourself: How does what Im doing now measure up
against my vision of what I want to be doing 5 years [or
however long] from now?

50,000 Feet Purpose. Higher calling. Why are you

here? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What do
you want people to say about you when youre gone? How
would you defend your life to your ancestors or your
descendents?

Keep asking: So whats the next action?

Templates

Incompletion Trigger Lists

Natural Planning Model
Project Planning Trigger List
Mastering Workflow Overview
GTD Weekly Review
GTD Workflow Diagram for Processing & Organizing
Horizons of Focus
Link to free GTD-Q tool, an assessment to see how you
are doing with control and perspective

Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective

Execution and Change
by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak

While strategy formulation is extremely challenging and difficult,

it is not the planning that worries CEOs most. It is the execution
of strategy. Making the plan work is an even bigger challenge
than creating the plan. Execution is the key to competitive
success.

Why is execution so problematic? Business schools are partly to

blame. Most MBA programs focus on strategy formulation and
functional planning. Core courses typically hone in on
competitive strategy, marketing strategy, financial strategy, and
so on. How many courses in most core programs deal exclusively
with execution or implementation? Usually none. Execution is
most certainly touched on in a couple of the courses, but not in a
dedicated, elaborate, purposeful way. Emphasis clearly is on
conceptual work, primarily planning, and not on doing.
Added to the lack of training in execution is the fact that strategy
and planning in most business schools are taught in "silos," by
departments or disciplines, and execution suffers further. Bright
graduates are well versed in strategy and planning, with only a
passing exposure to execution.
Extrapolating this into the real world suggests that there are
many managers who have rich conceptual backgrounds and
training in planning but not in "doing." The lack of formal
attention to strategy execution in the classroom obviously must
carry over to a lack of attention and consequent
underachievement in the area of execution in the real world.
Key execution challenges:

Is the culture of the organization appropriate for the

challenges ahead?
Are people rewarded for seniority or for "getting older," rather than for performance or competitive achievement?
Overcoming problems with traditional functional "silos" in
the organization's structure
Is the organization able to take on the challenges inherent
in managing change?

Execution represents a disciplined process or a logical set of

connected activities that enables an organization to take a
strategy and make it work. Without a careful, planned approach
to execution, strategic goals cannot be attained. Strategy
execution is difficult but worthy of management's attention
across all levels of an organization.
Obstacles and impediments to execution include:

the longer time frames needed for execution

the need for involvement of many people in the execution
process
poor or vague strategy
conflicts with the organizational power structure
poor or inadequate sharing of information
a lack of understanding of organizational structure,
including information sharing and coordination methods
unclear responsibility and accountability in the execution
process
an inability to manage change, including cultural change.

The operational aspects of strategic and short-term objectives

mean that these objectives are measurable. They are useful for
strategy execution if they measure important results. Strategy
must be translated into metrics that are consistent with strategy
and measurable. Only then can the results of execution be
adequately assessed. Without these useful metrics, successful
evaluation of execution results is not possible.
To change culture, dont focus directly on culture itself or the
underlying defining aspects of culture: values, norms, and
credos. Dont try to change attitudes, hoping for a change in

behavior. Focus instead on behavior. It is virtually impossible to

appeal to people to change their beliefs, values, or attitudes.
Culture both affects behavior and performance and is affected
and reinforced by behavior and performance. How does one
change behavior and, ultimately, culture? The answer is by
changing people, incentives, controls, and organizational
structure.
Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed.
Theres no point in having managers who dream up ambitious
scenarios but leave the execution to their underlings. Managers
are trained to plan, not execute.
This has to change. Planning and execution are interdependent,
and execution always takes longer than formulation. Execution is
a process, not an action or step.
Let the Grunts handle execution.
Some top-level managers actually believe that strategy
execution or implementation is "below them," something best
left to the grunts, the lower-level employees. While every
organization has some separation of planning and doing, of
formulation and execution, this separation must not become
dysfunctional.
When the "elite" plan and see execution as something below
them, detracting from their dignity as top managers, the
successful implementation of strategy is in jeopardy.

A systematic roadmap for execution includes:

organizational structure
coordination
information sharing
incentives
controls
change management
culture
the role of power and influence in your business.

Issue #1: the need for sound planning and a clear, focused
strategy

Corporate-level planning
Business strategy

Issue #2: the importance of integrating corporate and

business strategies

The role of the business is unclear

Inappropriate performance metrics
Battles over resource allocations
Assessments of business performance create additional
problems
The strategy review

Issue #3: the need to define and communicate the operational

components of strategy

Integrating strategic and short-term objectives

Need for measurable objectives

Issue #4: understanding the "demands" of strategy and

successful execution

Low-cost producer
Differentiation strategies
Developing the right capabilities

Strategy review: integrating planning, execution, and control

Step 1: strategy formulation

Step 2: the execution plan
Step 3: initiating the control process
Step 4: cause-effect analysis and
organizational learning
Step 5: feedback and change
Step 6: follow up and continue the process

Critical Structural Issues

Measuring costs and benefits of structure

Centralization vs. Decentralization
The strategy-structure-performance relationship

Rules of change:

The reasons for change must be clear, compelling, and

agreed upon by key players
Change behavior. A change in culture will follow
Effective communication is vital to culture change
Adequate effort must be expanded to reduce resistance
to change
Beware of excessive speed

Develop a model for execution:

Choose the right metrics. More and more companies are

choosing metrics that help them evaluate not only their
financial performance, but whether a plan is succeeding.

Dont forget the plan. Keep the plan on centre stage by

separating executive meetings about operations from
meetings focused on strategy. Strategy only succeeds
when it is integrated into operations.

Assess performance frequently. Shorten the performance

monitoring cycle from quarter-by-quarter to month-bymonth or week-by-week.

Communicate. Dont create a cultural distinction between

the executives who design a strategy and people lower
down in the corporate hierarchy who carry it out.

CASE STUDY: During AT&Ts landmark breakup in 1984, its

biggest leadership challenge was not in coming up with a new
strategic direction for his division but in actually getting the plan
up and running. Organizational structure, institutional culture,
coordination, and communication methods all affect a company's
ability to act on its strategic initiatives.
Other tips:

The need for effective coordination and information

sharing.
The importance of integration
Don't demotivate people
Reward the right things

Reward cooperation
Clarify responsibility and accountability
Culture affects performance
Organizational performance affects culture

Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down

and Get It Done
By Mark Morgan, Raymond E Levitt and William A Malek
Expensive well-formulated business strategies fail 90% of the
time due to poor implementation rather than to inherently poor
strategy. Leaders don't identify and invest in the full range of
projects and programs required to align the organization with its
strategy. Executives often lack a systematic approach for
identifying and implementing the right array of actions needed to
deliver on their promised strategies. Worse, they make broad -

and mistaken - assumptions about how well the strategy they

have in mind converts into understandable work at all levels of
the organization. They also overestimate their company's ability
to effect the changes necessary to implement their latest
strategic vision.
What differentiates one organization from another in terms of
strategic execution is the discipline of engaging the strategy with
the tailored portfolio of projects and programs that will bring it to
life.
A company can only commit to its espoused strategy by
engaging in the appropriate project portfolio. Engagement
directs the scarce resources of time, money, equipment, and
attention to the right mix of projects and programs.
The prioritization process establishes what we would like to do.
The crux of engagement lies in connecting that list with the
reality of what we are able to do.
That's why the next step in the engagement imperative is to
understand the organization's actual capacity to do the
prioritized work. The planning processes often take place with
less than perfect data. While we can never plan past the horizon
of our knowledge; we can plan out to that horizon and replan as
we gain more information.
I.N.V.E.S.T. - 6 imperatives that leaders must continually
address and align to ensure that they are defining the right
strategic projects - and implementing them properly. These
imperatives provide a roadmap for any organization seeking to
successfully carry out its strategies:

1. Ideation - how to clarify and communicate the company's

identity (its inherent value), purpose (its reason for being
in business), and long-range intention (what it will create
in 5, 10, 10, 20, or more years into the future). The who,
what, and why that guide all the organization's decisions,
help recruit talented workers who share the organization's
vision, and give its people a reason to participate
energetically and passionately every day.
2. Vision - tactics for translating the identity, purpose and
long-range intention into clear goals' and metrics that
enable leaders to determine whether goals have been
achieved. The interconnections among goals, metrics and
strategy. Taken collectively, these three elements form
the vision imperative: clarify the strategy in goals and
metrics.
3. Nature - a framework for aligning the organization's
strategy, culture (the values it cherishes and the kinds of
people, activities and achievements it celebrates), and
structure (including decision authority, reporting
relationships, information flows, and performance
evaluation and incentive systems).
4. Engagement - a process for managing the company's
portfolio of strategic initiatives such that the right mix of
projects is continuously redefined to execute its strategy
in the face of rapidly evolving markets and technologies;
and so that strategic projects are continually reviewed for
ongoing relevance and adequate resources (time, money,
skills, equipment, and attention). Engagement creates the
crucial dynamic translation between strategy and action,
by integrating action with intent. The engagement
domain links the strategy developed in the strategymaking domains of ideation, vision, and nature with the
portfolio of projects to be executed in the synthesis and
transition domains of executing strategy.

5. Synthesis - methods for monitoring and aligning project

work to ensure that all scarce resources - especially scarce
human resources - are being dynamically deployed to
maximize strategic benefits.
6. Transition - how to move the results of strategic projects
into the mainstream of the company's operations, so the
organization can rapidly reap the projects' benefits. How
projects and programs become part of ongoing
operations.

Strategy Execution Heroes:

Business Strategy Implementation and
Strategic Management Demystified
by Jeroen De Flander
Even the best strategy is worthless if you are unable to get it
implemented. Research published in The Harvard Business Review
shows that companies continue to lose 40-60% of their strategic
potential while trying to execute it. In many organisations,
Strategy Execution is still a black box. You throw your strategy in
one end and performance comes out the other end.

But nobody really knows what did the trick. Its impossible to say
what worked and what didnt. Even worse, companies change
things for the worse because they dont know the key elements
of their execution success.
Strategy execution is your highway to performance. To be more
precise, you should picture your strategy execution process not
as a single street but as a network of unique roads smaller and
larger ones all interlinked together. And the roads carry names
like strategy review process, initiative management process,
coaching process, individual objective setting process and so
on. And all of these processes, and the interaction between
them, are vital to your execution success.
Organisations need to overcome bottlenecks:
There is too much complexity.
Managers dont understand the process.
Clear ownership is lacking.
The process and improvement actions are not visible on
the executive radar.
Managers fear proposing, and making, changes.
The process isnt adapted to the needs of the
organisation.
The quality of the process isnt measured.
One part of the process gets all of the attention, and
others none.
Its too expensive.
This book helps you to:
Approach Strategy Execution from a managers
perspective.
Align individual/organisational performance in an easy
to communicate, sexy Strategy Execution framework.

Communicate your strategy effectively.

Set great objectives for yourself and your team
members.
Coach others through the implementation maze.
Simplify your Strategy Execution process.
Select, manage and deliver your strategic initiatives.
Set up a development platform to boost the execution
skills of others in the organisation.
Turn Strategy Execution into a competitive
advantage.

Strategy Execution is a discipline of its own.

Making strategy work isnt the same as strategy making. Its a
different game with its own rules, potential pitfalls and best
practices. There are 4 important differentiators:
1. It involves everyone. From the CEO to the blue-collar
worker, everyone is involved in executing the strategy.
Their roles might be different, but all individuals
contribute to the organisations execution effort.
2. It takes much longer. You can build a strategy in a few
weeks (or months at the most) but the execution can take
several years. Its a sprint versus a marathon.
3. It demands short- and long-term thinking. While
executing, you need to manage your long-term
implementation plan and worry about the nitty-gritty
actions you will take tomorrow.
4. It requires a specific skill set. A different game demands
different skills. The most important strategy skill by far is
analytical thinking, whereas executioners particularly
benefit from strong objective setting and people skills
such as communication and coaching.

Great Strategy Execution requires a great strategy. A great

execution can never compensate for a poor strategy.
Strategy Execution requires your attention from the strategy
formulation phase. Execution isnt something you worry about
after you have already finished crafting your strategy.
Strategy Execution requests a seamless integration between
organisational and individual performance. You can look at
performance from either an organisational or an individual
perspective. But in order to realise your strategy, a connection
between both is crucial.
Strategy Execution demands clear responsibilities. Strategy
Execution takes place across different organisational levels.
Depending on the size of the company, these include the overall
company level, one or more intermediate levels and the
individual level. In large organisations, you can have up to 10
different parties involved, including corporate functions,
functional lines, regional structures and countries. In addition,
within each of these structures, responsibilities are often
dispersed among the departments of human resources, finance
and strategy and the various leadership teams.
Strategy Execution requires horizontal alignment. The vital
importance of a strong horizontal collaboration between
business and support departments. Their relationship should go
beyond the annual budget and monthly operational meetings.
Strategy Execution needs heroes. Managers are the most
important players in the execution contest. In fact, strategy
remains a paper exercise without managers taking the right
actions and fulfilling their roles. They contribute content, are the

links between organizational levels, and act as performance role

models. And this requires the right attitude. Execution isnt
something others should worry about.
Each manager should:

Acknowledge the importance of Strategy Execution.

Understand what Strategy Execution is all about.
See execution as an essential part of being a leader.
Know how to maximise their crucial role in the whole
process.
Develop the necessary Strategy Execution skills.

Senior managers need to put the necessary processes in place to

ensure that all managers in the organisation become execution
heroes. This is a challenge in itself.
Strategy Execution demands measurement. Organisations
need to measure their performance:

Find the strong and weak points of your execution

process. If possible, compare them against your
competitors. Evaluate the complete process or zoom in on
one or two steps. Do the exercise for the organisation,
one or more divisions, or start with only a small team.
Once you have gained these insights, focus your energy
on those things that matter most for the organisation. In
other words, set priorities.
Dont forget to keep doing what you do well. Once youve
identified your strong points, make sure you keep them
best-in-class.

Have a long-term perspective. It takes time to build

capabilities. Small organisations should count on 18
months to become best-in-class. For a large
multinational, it can take up to three years to get there.
Your measurement approach should take the long-term
into account.
Set intermediate goals and measure your progress. While
you do want a long-term measurement perspective, you
also want to define and track intermediate targets.

Strategy Execution is a permanent activity. It is part of the

organisations culture and DNA, driven with persistence and
discipline.
5 execution hazards to consider while developing your
strategy.
1. The existing culture. Strategies that demand a large
cultural shift are doomed to failure as cultural change is
very hard to accomplish. Ask yourself: How big is the
culture change needed in order to execute the new
strategy? and Is the required change realistic?
2. The existing power structures. Each organisation has its
own power structures, invisible at the surface and part of
the unwritten rules within the organisation. But they do
exist. And they will influence your execution capabilities.
Pose the following questions: What are the current power
structures in our organisation? and How will they impact
the implementation of the strategy we are developing?

3. The ability to change. Each strategy will demand a change

effort. The effort is always bigger than you anticipate at
the start. Ask yourself: How much change can our
organisation handle?
4. The maturity of execution process. Once finished, the
strategy will use the existing execution processes in your
organisation. Upgrading is pos-sible but takes time. So
ask yourself: Whats the current maturity of our execution
capabilities?, Is there a need to upgrade? and How long
will the upgrade realistically take to accomplish?

5. The maturity of Strategy Execution skills. Processes need

skilled people to operate them. The questions to ask:
Whats the current maturity of the managers execution
skills?, Is there a need to upgrade? and How long will
the upgrade realistically take to accomplish?
8 crucial building blocks
1. Review and update your strategy. Your strategy is the
long-term action plan designed to achieve your vision.
Depending on your industry, it maps the road you should
take for the next 3-to-10 years. Its designed to help you
gain the competitive advantage over your industry peers.
Annually, a company needs (and wants) to update its
strategy based on changes in its competitive environment
and on the Strategy Execution feedback from the
previous cycle. This includes strategy updates as they take
place on a regular basis at all levels of the organisation. It
excludes the real strategy work, conducted only once
every 3-5 years at the top of an organisation.

2. Communicate. As soon as your strategy (or strategy

update) is finalised and approved by all stakeholders, you
should focus on strategy communication. Transparent
and easy-to-understand communication creates the
necessary understanding and engagement for the new,
adapted strategy. It is essential to use all available
communication platforms. One big strategy event and a
single strategy email are not nearly enough. Use other
meeting platforms, discussion groups, informal and
formal encounters, performance management sessions,
intranets, websites, screensavers, coffee rooms,
noticeboards etc. to communicate the strategy. You
cannot over-communicate your vision and strategy! Pay
attention to the quality of your strategy communication.
Senior managers as strategy ambassadors should be
careful how they communicate. In addition to the content
itself, tone of voice and presentation skills are essential
elements in transferring content and creating the
necessary enthusiasm for others to pass on the message.
Make sure you dont kill your strategy with poor-quality,
uninspiring communication.
3. Cascade. When you cascade your companys strategy,
you break down the objectives into smaller chunks for the
next organisational level. The process stops at the team
level. In the end, the size of your organisation will define
the size of the cascade. It is crucial to achieve macro
alignment between all the objectives horizontally and
vertically in your organisation. You can achieve better
alignment by aiming for MECE Mutually Exclusive and
Collectively Exhaustive. This means that everything from
the level below (strategy, initiatives, objectives, etc.)
should add up exactly to the level above, with no overlaps.

4. Compare and learn. Your strategy is a hypothesis. Its

your best estimate of the route to success but its still an
estimation. Its crucial to take some time at the end of a
cycle to go back and check your hypothesis, to compare
your initial strategic assumptions with what you have
learnt from the reality of the Strategy Execution cycle
that is being completed. By doing this, you will put
yourself in the forefront research shows that only 15
percent of companies take this step. But at the same
time, make sure that you dont just look at your strategy:
study your Strategy Execution capability as well. All too
often, we see companies jumping automatically to
change their strategy because they did not reach their
projected performance. But, upon examination, there is
nothing wrong with their strategy. The problem is the
execution. So dont forget to challenge your
implementation capabilities as well! This compare and
learn step will help you verify your hypothesis (read
review your strategy), update your strategy, and fi netune your execution efforts and capabilities accordingly.
5. Manage initiatives. Initiative management is the activity
in which your dreams run up against reality, where your
strategy meets operations and where resources are added
to the strategy formula. Its one of the most difficult
Strategy Execution steps and therefore the point where
implementation often goes wrong. Initiative management
is all about selecting, prioritising and executing the right
strategic initiatives: those actions that will lead to the
realization of your strategy.

6. Set objectives. Setting individual objectives is one of the

best things you can do to improve performance yours,
your teams or even that of an entire organisation. The
positive impact of goal setting is one of the most widely
researched and scientifically validated aspects of todays
organizational science. Link all individual objectives with
the overall strategy. If you dont, you might end up with
great individual objectives but of no use to the
organisation! Also, focus on the way you secure
agreement on the objectives. Its the quality of the
objectives including the link with the overall company
strategy and the acceptance of these objectives that will
make your individual objective setting a success.
7. Monitor and coach. Regular coaching motivates people
and dramatically increases their chances of success. It also
simplifies the final performance evaluation. In fact,
regular coaching is far more important than the formal
review meeting somewhere around the middle of the
year. Providing feedback in the right way a key coaching
skill is a crucial step in boosting performance.
Performance coaching is a relatively new, but rapidly
growing, knowledge field.
8. Evaluate performance. Most organisations conduct a
formal performance evaluation at the end of the
individual performance management cycle. Ideally, the
evaluation should answer the question: Are the individual
performance objectives achieved?. Be sure you make an
honest assessment. Several techniques can help you.
Although its important to link performance to
remuneration, performance evaluation should be a
separate process.

Downloads from www.strategy-execution-heroes.com:

The Strategy Execution Barometer: research report a

summary.
Link your objectives with the next level up a template.
Score your Strategy Execution process self-assessment.
Boost your Strategy Execution process guideline
overview.
Boost your Strategy Execution process workshop
format.
Write a great performance story an example.
Write a great performance story workshop format.

Beyond Strategy: The Leader's Role in

Successful Implementation
by Robin Speculand

Strategy implementation is defined as the actions a company

takes today to execute the strategy tomorrow. People in the
company are always taking action. But is it the right action? Are
the actions that your staff members are taking today driving the
implementation? Are the actions hindering or supporting it? If
there are not enough of the right actions being taken then your
strategy is heading for the graveyard.

Leaders are responsible not only for crafting strategy but also for
implementing it. Implementation of strategy can't simply be
delegated. Leaders know that a titanic mistake has been to focus
more on crafting strategy than implementing it.
The Implementation Compass: 8 global best practices of
implementation.
The Implementation Compass assesses your readiness to
implement your strategy, assists in crafting your Implementation
Plan, and identifies the actions you need to take today to deliver
tomorrow's strategy. The Implementation Compass guides
management through a very holistic approach that addresses all
the facets of the organization, all the processes and subprocesses and progressively transforms the very DNA of the
organization towards the desired state that the strategy
envisions.
12 Implementation Tips for Success
1. Dont underestimate the implementation challenge as it is
tougher than you anticipate.
2. Recognize that every implementation is unique and it has
to fit your organizations culture.
3. Break the mold of previous failures identify and take the
right actions.
4. Review on-going projects for alignment against the new
strategy objectives.
5. Recognize that it will mean more work.
6. Treat staff members as your Strategy Customers.
7. Focus on Mavericks support the people who support
you.

8. Communicate well. Strategy cant be implemented if it

cant be understood and it cant be understood if it cant
be explained.
9. Brand your strategy by giving it an image so as to win over
the hearts and minds of your Strategy Customers.
10. Resolve small implementation problems before they
become big problems.
11. Conduct reviews of your implementation every two
weeks!
12. Made the promise, now deliver stay focused.
6 Mind Shifts that need to take place for the success of an
implementation
MIND SHIFT #1 - 'When crafting strategy is complete, the
hardest part is over.' No, implementation is twice as difficult
as creating strategy. Once leaders have created their strategies,
they believe they have completed most of their responsibilities.
The hardest part is over. Yet they habitually underestimate the
challenge of implementing that strategy. Many delegate this
process to others, taking their eyes off what needs to be done to
put their strategies in place. But implementing strategy is at least
twice as hard as creating the right strategy. 9 out of 10
implementations fail not because the strategy was wrong, but
because the execution was poorly done. Fortune article June
1999: Companies fail to successfully implement strategy not
because of bad strategy but bad execution. Remember, no
leadership team intentionally adopts a bad strategy. It is only in
its execution that leaders realize that the strategy is weak. It is
the implementation of a strategy that delivers revenue, not the
crafting.

MIND SHIFT #2 - 'Most people resist change.' No, most people

are open to change when it is communicated in the right ways.
When a new strategy is announced, staff members generally
respond in one of four ways: indifference, resistance, disbelief
and support. Which ones occur depend on what the change
means to each individual.

Only 20% resist change these are the Saboteurs. I

60% of the staff members are fence-sitters, neither
supporting the implementation nor opposing it. They
arrive at 9.00 am and depart at 6.00 pm. In between, they
simply do their jobs. They don't volunteer for additional
work, but they don't actively resist change, either. These
are the Groupies.
20% welcome the change, embrace it and willingly
support it. These early adopters drive the change. They
are the Mavericks.

Saboteurs make the most noise, creating the wrong impression

that most people resist change. Groupies keep quiet because
they do not want to draw attention to themselves. Mavericks just
get on with the work on hand.
MIND SHIFT #3 - 'It's all about taking actions.' No, it's about
taking the right actions. In business, you are always taking
action, filling up the amount of time you have with activity.
But the difference between success and failure is that successful
leaders ask: "Are we taking the right actions?"

MIND SHIFT #4 - 'Communication is all about making sure

people understand the strategy.' No, staff members also must
know exactly what actions they need to take. Before staff
members can adopt any new strategy, they must first understand
it. Absolutely. Successful implementation goes beyond ensuring
staff members understand the strategy; they must also know
exactly what to do and be motivated to do it. Much
communication about a new strategy focuses on its launch,
which is usually marked with electronic presentations, briefings
and t-shirts. Shifting the focus from the initial fanfare to staff
members embracing the strategy is imperative.
Launch communication also has to spell out what each staff
member needs to do differently as a result of the new strategy.
The question 'what actions should I take to participate in the new
strategy?' has to be answered for everyone. And there's more.
Ways to motivate those who implement the strategy (staff
members, not leaders) must be introduced. Measures to track the
new strategy need to be set up. New behaviors need to be
encouraged through reinforcement. Early adopters should be
recognized and encouraged so others follow their lead.
CASE STUDY: When Rolls Royce rolled out its new strategy a
few years ago, it used 'strategy storyboards' to share the new
message across its broad organization. The storyboards
translated abstract ideas into concrete actions. They not only
explained why the strategy was important but what Rolls Royce
staff members were expected to do differently. In addition, 75
managers were trained to conduct the briefing and hold at least
4000 presentations around the world.

After this effort, staff members were able to both understand the
strategy and know exactly what to do to help implement it.
Strategy can't be implemented if it can't be understood, and it
can't be understood if it can't be broken down into action steps.
MIND SHIFT #5 - 'What worked yesterday will work
tomorrow.' No, new strategies are needed every two or three
years. Peter Drucker observed that "maintaining yesterday is
difficult and time consuming and therefore requires the
institution's scarcest and most valuable resources - and above all,
its ablest people - to non-results." Acting this way means your
people are not available to create a successful tomorrow.
MIND SHIFT #6 - 'Strategy must be reviewed twice a year.'
No, it must be reviewed twice a month at least! If leaders are
responsible for both crafting and executing strategy, it follows
that implementation should be discussed as frequently as
possible. Successful implementation requires conducting
strategy reviews every two weeks. To predict where an
organization will be in two years, do not look at its strategy on
paper. Instead, pay attention to the daily actions its leaders and
staff members take.

The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to

Operations for Competitive Advantage
By Robert Kaplan and David Norton

It is easy to plan a strategy, write it down and give directions to

who should do what and when. But its another thing to make the
plan work successfully in practice. Most companies lack a formal
structure for connecting strategy to successful implementation.
Leadership is the first key issue around execution. Without strong

visionary leadership, strategy will not be executed effectively.

The second key issue is to recognize that strategy and operations
(or tactics) are both important but different.
Too few companies align their operational improvement
activities to strategic priorities. Companies need a formal process
for using strategic objectives to set priorities for where
operational improvements can have the largest impact on
strategy execution.
A time-driven activity-based cost model provides the previously
missing link between the revenue growth targets in a strategic
plan and the authorization for spending to supply the quantities
of resource capacity that are necessary to fulfill the sales and
production needs of the strategic plan. Without this coupling,
operational plans either provide too little or too much capacity
for the strategic plan.
Companies err when they devote all their time together for firefighting and coping with near-term issues. The formal strategy
execution system schedules strategy review meetings at a
different time from operational review meetings. In that way,
each meeting has its own frequency, agenda, information
system, and participation, as best meets the goals for that
meeting.
Executive leadership pervades every stage of the management
system. Without strong leadership at the top, even a
comprehensive
management
system
cannot
deliver
breakthrough performance. Leadership is both necessary and
sufficient for successful strategy execution.

The 6 stages of a performance plan:

1: Develop the Strategy
Strategic planning requires a first-things-first mentality. First nail
down your firms mission (purpose), elucidate its values (how it
fulfills the mission) and spotlight its vision (future aspiration).
Then perform a PESTEL (political, economic, social,
technological, environmental and legal) analysis; and a value
chain analysis to assess the internal processes that deliver your
products or services. Do a SWOT analysis. An alternative is to
conduct scenario planning, where you role-play possible
responses to competitors moves or marketplace changes.
Document your strategy, and how you plan to achieve it.
2: Plan the Strategy
Translate your strategic objectives into specific targets and
initiatives, that is, short-term action plans. Create an overall
strategy map, an easy-to-grasp, one-page graphic. This can
help you visualize your strategic objectives, the actions you will
take toward them, and the resources you will need. Organize
your strategy map according to strategic themes, subject
clusters that show the primary components of your strategy.
Financial Operating profit, return on investment, cost
per unit and so on.
Customer Number of customers, increases in your
customer base, customer satisfaction and the like. This
includes your companys value proposition, how it offers
distinct advantages to customers.
Process Operations, product development, facilities
management and other areas related to the financial and
customer goals.
Growth and learning Systems, personnel and similar
organizational resources.

3: Align the Organization with the Strategy

Ensure that all your departments and employees understand and
support your strategy. This is not easy. Numerous barriers block
successful implementation. To align your strategy and your
operations, use your global strategy maps and scorecards to
explain your strategy visually and quantitatively. Share them with
each unit, following a top down process that uses your
executive strategy maps as input for all your operating and
support units.
These units can craft derivative strategy maps and scorecards to
make their efforts fit the firms goals. Armed with this data,
individual units can work toward their strategic goals, with every
unit signing off on the same sheet. You need an internal
communication plan directed at employees that thoroughly
details your strategic goals and how the organization plans to
achieve them. Communicate your strategy and goals seven
times in seven different ways. Only with such total saturation
can you be confident that your employees will understand and
support your strategy message.
4: Plan Operations
Link your strategy to the most critical operational activities,
including planning and budgeting. Time-driven activity-based
costing, or TDABC, is a valuable tool for analyzing the resources
you need. Building connections between strategy and
operational activities may require improving certain core
processes.
You may need to adapt forecasting and budgeting to relate to
strategic goals. In making these adjustments, focus on value
propositions that represent your companys strategic core.

5: Monitor and Learn

Constantly monitor performance to ensure that the company is
meeting its strategic objectives and that operations are moving
ahead as planned. Hold regular data-driven meetings to focus on
operational difficulties, and to check improvement activities and
programs. Such sessions provide the best opportunity to
establish feedback and guarantee control. Distinguish strategy
reviews from operational reviews. Operational reviews are
frequent departmental meetings to check short-term
performance, focus on processes and involve dashboards. At
these monthly or quarterly cross-functional meetings, have
people report on the progress of strategic themes so you can
fine-tune strategy-related programming.
6: Test and Adapt the Strategy
At some point your company may need to adjust or change its
strategy, perhaps due to new information, emerging
opportunities, performance shortfalls, or regulatory and
competitive changes, as determined by a PESTEL analysis.
Convene a strategy testing and adapting meeting to examine
strategic change or adjustment issues, and to determine if your
strategy works and remains valid. Examine any possible strategic
flaws. Ask if your initial hypotheses and assumptions still hold,
and if cause-and-effect results are unfolding as anticipated in
Stage 2. Analyze determinative data that shows whether your
strategy is good or needs to be changed. Use economic and
statistical models. Turn to front-line employees for their
opinions and insights about strategy viability. Your executive
team usually would discuss strategy adaptations or changes at its
annual strategy review meeting, but you may wish to meet
quarterly to consider strategy adaptations.

Managing Strategy from a Central Office.

Strategy management should be a global, cross-functional effort.
This requires having a central department for coordination and
execution, an Office of Strategy Management (OSM). In the
same way that the chief financial officer owns budgeting, OSM
owns strategy execution. This unit coordinates the activities of
all organizational units so that strategy and operations mesh well
in a closed-loop system. It sets up all planning, execution and
feedback components, and integrates IT, fiscal management,
HR, marketing, operations and other functions to support the
strategy.
The Importance of Committed Leadership
The most astute program to mesh strategy with operations will
fail if it lacks dedicated leaders. Responsibility starts with the
CEO, who must explain corporate strategy and its execution so
that all employees understand it. CEO leadership is necessary
and sufficient to a strategy management system, since
strategy management absolutely requires a fully engaged chief
executive and such a system enables the CEO to direct
operations to meet strategic goals.

Executing strategy
Harvard Business Press Pocket Mentor

The successful execution of strategy hinges on turning priority

issues into action plans for strategic initiatives and then carrying
out those action plans at the unit level.
Its at this point that strategic planning meets execution.

Components of an action plan:

Priority issue description of the broad area that team

plans to focus on, and why its important.

Objectives and metrics objectives allow you to measure

how you are performing.

Steps the who, what and when. Outline 4-5 high-level

tasks.

Resources people, money, technologies

Interlocks cross-functional collaboration

Impact estimate anticipated cost and revenue potential

of the project

Interlocks. Most units dont work in isolation to execute their

strategy
Reviewing progress

Check in informally
Report regularly
Conduct quarterly reviews

Understanding the causes of misalignment

Plans are expanded

Plans are trimmed
Resources are inadequate

Tips for managing alignment

Accept that changes to your strategic initiatives are

inevitable
Be clear about who has final approval of any changes
introduced
If a change is suggested, you must ask yourself whether it
fully supports the corporate strategy and the priority
issues you have identified
Clearly define the ramifications of accepting and
implementing any change you intend to make to your
original action plans
Determine where any extra resources that you might
need will come from.

Creating an environment for execution excellence

Develop a strategic mindset in your group

Consider and consolidate your culture
Foster leadership
Identify and address resistance
Train people for the future

Evaluating and rewarding performance

Use quantitative criteria

Use qualitative criteria
Reward desired results

Templates and checklists

Worksheet for conducting a SWOT analysis

Worksheet for developing an Action Plan
Worksheet for determining objectives from key result
areas
Alignment Worksheet
Creating an environment-for-excellence checklist
Worksheet for conducting a SWOT analysis
Worksheet for conducting a SWOT analysis

Closing the Execution Gap:

How Great Leaders and Their
Companies Get Results
Richard Lepsinger

If an organization cant execute, nothing else mattersnot the

smartest strategy, not the most innovative business model, not
even game-changing technology. For many companies there is a
clear gap between intent and execution.

For companies struggling to pull themselves out of the ditch the

recession kicked them into, an inability to get things done is very
bad news. If you cant execute well, youre not going to be
successful - and you might not be around for long.
The 5 bridges that enable people to traverse the execution
gap:
Bridge No. 1: The ability to manage change.
Change is inevitable; we all know that as individuals. However,
despite their sincerest efforts, many companies cant seem to
assimilate that fact and turn it into positive action. Thats a
dangerous shortcoming. You cant run a successful business if
you cant adjust to changes in the marketplace.
CASE STUDY: Dell. Dell developed the Dell Way, and its
reluctance to tread off of the beaten path cost it its customers.
The company attracted customers to its website with low-cost
computers that required buyers to purchase add-ons to build a
custom machinewhich meant the price would end up higher
than the original low-cost offer.
But when tons of affordable computers with all the bells and
whistles that consumers wanted became readily available
through other online outlets and retailers, consumers didnt have
to go to Dell to get a custom-made computer. Dell turned a
problem into a huge problem. When its leaders realized they
were losing business to competitors, they fell back on a practice
that had always worked for them before: They cut costs to
maintain market share. One area that suffered was customer
service, originally one of the companys biggest strengths. Dell
created a customer-service nightmare.

Bridge No. 2: A structure that supports execution.

Successful organizations strike the right balance between
centralization and decentralization. Many companies go to great
lengths to develop an exciting vision, create a realistic strategy,
and get employees engaged. But then they assume their current
organizational structure and systems will support the new
strategy. Often, thats just not true. Structure isnt just about
efficiency. A good structure enhances accountability,
coordination, and communication. Plus, it ensures that decisions
are being made as close to the action as possible.
Bridge No. 3: Employee involvement in decision making.
The world is too complex for any leader to go it alone. To make
good decisions, you must seek out the perspectives of a wide
range of peopleand who knows better than employees what
the closest-to-the-ground issues are? Involving employees in
decisions gets them focused on generating solutions to problems
rather than complaining or waiting to be told what to do. It
creates a valuable sense of ownership.
Bridge No. 4: Alignment between leaders actions and
companys values and priorities.
No company should ever have two sets of values and
expectations: one for the leader(s) and one for the employees.
When leaders say one thing and do another, business suffers. If
youre a leader, employees pattern their behavior after yours. If
how you behave signals that we are all in this together, people
are more likely to be motivated. When you expect employees to
behave a certain way, such as serving customers better or
minimizing waste, or ask employees to focus on certain priorities,
like cost containment or innovation, youd better do the same. A
do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitude sends mixed messages and
breeds resentment.

CASE STUDY: Bailout-seeking auto executives. The CEOs of

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler shocked members of
Congress and the American public when they used private jets to
travel to Washington, D.C. for a hearing. This got them to their
destination in speed and comfort, but it sent a very wrong
message. The purpose of the trip was to ask for government
assistance to help their companies get through the worst
recession in U.S. history and the worst market for car sales in the
history of their industry. Behavior so inconsistent with what was
described as a crisis is an example of how the automotive
executives helped create the problem in which they have found
themselves. It aimed a 10,000-megawatt spotlight on their lack
of awareness of the connection between their behavior and the
situation at hand.
Bridge No. 5: Companywide coordination and cooperation.
Most employees have good intentions. They want to cooperate
with colleagues and co-workers. (Who is going to consciously
sabotage their own livelihood?) Yet, ensuring that decisions and
actions are coordinated across organizational boundaries
requires more than faith and words alone. It takes shared goals,
clear communication, and well-defined roles. In addition, people
must be held accountable for doing what theyre supposed to do.
Accountability demands two things: clear performance
expectations, and systems that encourage and reinforce
appropriate employee behavior.
CASE STUDY: Toyota. After decades building a reputation
based on quality and reliability, Toyota Motor Corp. was forced to
recall more than 6 million cars across the world due to a faulty
accelerator pedal. How did this once mighty brand end up with
such a PR disaster on its hands? The answer is that Toyota used
to work with one supplier for each part. But when a fire at a

suppliers facility caused 20 plants to shut down for five days, the
company decided it needed a second source as a back-up. Toyota
failed to ensure that the accelerator it was receiving from the two
suppliers were identical.
6 ways to build the 5 bridges:
1: Create and use action plans.
Action plans are the cornerstone of effective execution. There are
three steps to creating and using action plans:

Step 1: Clarify your goals and standards. Standards are

statements of quality, quantity, and timing required for
success. They drive action steps and answer the question:
What actions must be taken to make sure we meet these
standards?

Step 2: Develop your action plan. Its basic components

include action steps that break down the work to be done
into tasks and activities, accountabilities identifying the
party/parties responsible for doing each step, a schedule
with start and completion dates for each action, and
resource requirements such as equipment, people,
money, or anything else needed to complete action steps.

Step 3: Minimize risk. A well-thought-out plan must

include an assessment of the potential problems that
could derail it, safeguards to stave off these what ifs,
and the determination of what will be done if problems
occur despite your best efforts.

2: Expect and get top performance.

When we believe people are capable, we treat them like they are
capable, and they come to believe they are capable.
Unfortunately, the converse is true as well. This powerful
dynamic starts when your expectations (high or low) are
translated into behavior.
3: Hold people accountable.
Create an environment that enables others to operate at a higher
level of responsibility.
4: Involve the right people in the right decisions.

Understand what delegate truly means.

Realize that sometimes its OK to be an autocrat.
Outsmart your brain with a systematic decision-making
process.

5: Facilitate change readiness.

Dont preach or lecture.

Help employees talk themselves into wanting to
change.
Reinforce change talk.

6: Enhance cooperation and collaboration.

Avoid the following conflict management mistakes:

Minimizing or ignoring others concerns

Pulling power plays
Attacking the legitimacy of others positions or priorities
Suppressing differences

Imposing own goals/priorities

Refusing to temporarily remove constraints
Going through the motions of managing the difference,
but refusing to carry it through

CASE STUDIES: Execution superstars

Procter & Gamble (Bridge No. 1: The ability to manage change)
P&Gs Mr. Clean Magic Eraser was a great hit. But what makes it
relevant to Bridge No. 1 lies in how the product came to fruition.
The organization had a track record of developing new products
in-house. With the Magic Eraser, it broke from that model. An
employee discovered the prototype in Japan, and rather than
limiting itself to internal ideas, P&G saw an opportunity to license
a product that already existed and tap into its own organizational
competence to add value. Its plan to use ideas that had been
developed outside the company worked due to P&Gs openness
to change and its ability to execute flawlessly.
IBM (Bridge No. 2: A structure that supports execution)
IBM set out to become a globally integrated enterprise. The
key? It put in place a structure that best supports this strategic
goal. Historically, IBM created mini versions of itself in each
country where it operated. As it turned out, this was inefficient
and expensive. Now the company sets up shop wherever it finds
the right talent at the right price: for example, global IT service
delivery in India, global supply chain in China, and global
financing back-office in Brazil. IBM also redesigned business
processes and automated work with software to help coordinate
these activities.

Google: (Bridge No. 3: Employee involvement in decision making)

When Google started out, it was easy to keep all of its employees
involvedprimarily because there were so few of them. But now
that the company has expanded to thousands of employees,
leaders have had to find ways to ensure that everyone has a
voice. One way they keep their ears open to grassroots ideas is by
allowing engineers to spend at least one day a week working on
their own pet projects. The company also uses smaller teams to
develop new conceptssometimes assigning only three or four
people to a team.
Costco: (Bridge No. 4: Alignment between leader actions and
company values and priorities)
Costco operates with razor-thin margins, yet manages to
maintain solid earnings through its membership fee and its
Spartan approach to costs. The fact that the CEO walks the talk
is at least partially responsible for Costcos success. In an
environment of thin margins, store managers need to be
obsessively focused on details. Costcos CEO models that
behavior every time he visits a warehouse store. He quizzes store
managers about the sales of each department, what they are
doing to move merchandise, and the process of individual items.
His office overlooks the parking lot of the Costco across the
street and he has folding chairs for visitors. He answers his own
phone and does not have an entourage like many successful
senior executives.
Cisco: (Bridge No. 5: Companywide coordination and cooperation)
Cisco changed the compensation system so that people were
paid not only for hitting their targets, but also for how effectively
they collaborated with their peers.

Get it Done! A blueprint for

business execution
Ralph Welborn and Vince Kasten

Here's what we need to do. Now let's get it done. We've all heard
those words before. We see what happens when great intentions
hit the brick wall of results. Many companies find it hard to align
their objectives with their activities. Effective, consistent
execution is often blocked by conflicting organizational activities,

silos, redundant processes, and confusing governance policies.

There is a fundamental gap execution gap between the best-laid
plans and their realization. The book identifies 10 common
challenges to successful business execution:
1. Knowing what connects with what, when, where, how, and
how much. This kind of connectivity is critical, and failing to have
visibility into it can derail execution efforts and cost companies
huge amounts of money.
2. Internal struggles around new products/services
development. These turf wars cause frustration, finger pointing,
delays and added costs.
3. Getting T-shirts, Turtlenecks, and Suits to agree. T-shirts
(operations people), Turtlenecks (marketing people), and Suits
(management) all speak different languages. Each of them may
use the same words and nod at the same set of business
objectives, but they mean fundamentally different things by
them. Each group has fundamentally different sets of metrics,
perspectives, and background, making alignment a real
challenge. There is often a fundamental disconnect between
diverse people within a company.
4. Silos: Corporate antibodies to change. Many change
management efforts to get different "teams" or "groups" to work
together more effectively are stymied because as soon as these
people go back to their areas, they do what they were doing
before.
5. Integrating "existing" with "emerging" technology.

6. The "invisibles." (What you don't know will bite you.)

Business processes are sets of activities, workarounds and
exceptions that, over time, have evolved into the ways things get
done, including technology "patches," "features" and
"modifications" added to support those processes. And many of
these things are undocumented, existing only in the heads of
your employees. Often, its "invisible" things that keep the
processes and applications running, yet they're hard to identify
when you're making a change.
7. Conflicts between what's good for the company and what's
good for your team. The people you work closely with every day
are your reality. And despite whatever abstract, ephemeral
corporate strategies are handed down, you will instinctively serve
this set of colleagues. There is frequently inherent conflict
between doing the right thing for your company but the wrong
thing for your team members. When such a conflict exists,
"getting it done" becomes immensely difficult.
8. The Botox Effect: managing the impossible decisions. Botox
takes out their wrinkles but inhibits normal facial expressions.
This isn't so different from executive teams telling you that you
have to cut costs and grow revenue. You have neither the time
nor the resources to do both. Yet you have to do both, and even
more. But when you fix one problem, another one is
automatically created. When you try to manage them all, in an
environment characterized by a "locked in" way of thinking and
operating, the "smile" you show to customers and your superiors
quickly becomes artificial.

9. The Peter-Out Principle and the rise of horizontal loyalty.

The Peter Principle held that people would rise through the ranks
of an organization until they reached their level of incompetence.
The Peter-Out Principle holds that people will move up the ranks
of an organization until they stop having fun. Talented people
walk out of organizations where they are no longer challenged or
inspired. Employer loyalty is being replaced by a horizontal
loyalty to colleagues, alliances, affiliations, associations, friends,
and families. It's hard to "get stuff done" when the people who
must carry out the execution just aren't that invested in the fate
of their organization.
10. Underestimating the Bull's Eye Effect. Don't make the
mistake of thinking you'll ever be able to close the execution gap
completely. You can only lessen it.

Strategy vs. Execution:

Whats More Important?
Source: www.performancemanagerblog.com

Strategy Formulation vs. Strategy Execution is like architecture

and construction: they are equally essential, and wholly
interdependent.You cant fulfil one without the other. Without
good blueprints, the house you build will be ugly and subfunctional, maybe dangerous (sounds like too many enterprises
we all know, right?). With good blueprints but bad construction,
the house you build may be nice looking, but certainly subfunctional and dangerous.
Practically speaking, while both Strategy Formulation and
Execution have their challenges and difficulties, weve seen that
Execution demands relatively far more sustained leadership
commitment, resource allocation, continuity, metric and timehorizon precision, and mass participation: drawing the house is
easier than actually building it.
Weve also seen that the known deficiencies in an
organizations Execution capabilities (absent leadership, weak
business process, metric vagueness, measurement imprecision,
poor enabling technologies) actually bias, disable and dilute the
Strategy Formulation process, i.e. we know that our enterprise
isnt capable of really executing the strategies we actually need to
execute, so well just formulate some that we can.

In worst-case scenarios, this profound incapability to actually

Execute creates a Strategy Formulation process that is corrupted,
warped and debased before it even engages. Yet, these
organizations invest millions in attempting to Execute Bad
Strategy.
This fundamental deficiency can be fixed with the powerful
performance management process automation solutions that
exist today: to enable leaders and the workforce with the timely,
precise and relevant performance results information that they
need to actively manage Execution. And, with process- and
technology-enabled Execution, credible and legitimate
Strategies can be formulated.
This issue of timing in a particular enterprise, or project/initiative,
is also fundamental. There is a time to Formulate (or assess and
re-Formulate), and there is a time to Execute. Reformulation of
Strategy occurs with much greater velocity and relative ease than
re-direction of Execution (re-allocation of leadership and
resources).
While adaptation is essential, rapid adaptation is optimally
effective. Leadership needs to always remain aware of where it
is in its enterprise cycle to understand IF Strategy and/or
Execution practically CAN be changed/re-allocated at any given
point in time. Responsive and precise performance management
enables that awareness.

The 33 Strategies of Execution

(with a doff of my hat to Robert Greenes 33 Strategies of War)

Based on the 12 execution titles surveyed in this book, here are 33

recurring themes as identified by the authors of these books:
1. Never launch an initiative unless youre personally
committed to it.
2. Make execution part of the organisations culture and
DNA.
3. Build an execution culture that continually anticipates and
adapts.
4. Picture execution not as a single street but as a network of
unique smaller and larger interlinked roads.
5. Focus your organisation on the few (3-4) most crucial
priorities.
6. At any given moment, focus fully on the one task that is
the single most important thing you could do right now.
7. Get used to making distinctive, tough and decisive
choices, remembering that sometimes its OK to be an
autocrat.
8. Hold a compelling kick-off event to create momentum.
9. Spell out the specific action tasks in writing.
10. Thoroughly clarify your strategic goals and how the
organization plans to achieve them.
11. Insist on robust dialogue.
12. Break your strategy down into manageable near-,
medium- and long-term goals and make all the pieces fit
by using plans, schedules, budgets and controls.
13. Follow up like crazy without driving people crazy.
14. Keep asking: So whats the next action?

15. Create a seamless integration between organisational and

individual performance.
16. Synchronize all the moving parts of the organization to
make sure they all share a common understanding.
17. Have the courage and emotional fortitude to tackle nonperformers.
18. Dont keep options open - avoid analysis paralysis.
19. Never finish a meeting without clarifying what the followthrough will be, who will do it, when and how they will do
it, what resources they will use.
20. Inspect what you expect - If its important, measure it:
21. Develop contingency plans - consider unexpected
scenarios and have back-up plans in place.
22. Capture and spread what you learn.
23. Get agreement and closure from all participants.
24. Use political skills to identify your allies and enlist the
mavericks who will help you overcome political obstacles.
25. End the project with another event where team members
are recognized, and possibly rewarded.
26. Leverage the power of internal and external partnerships
27. Generate creative tension.
28. Separate executive meetings about operations from
meetings focused on strategy.
29. Shorten the performance monitoring cycle from quarterly
to monthly or weekly.
30. Set intermediate goals and measure your progress conduct a formal performance evaluation at the end of
each performance management cycle.
31. Be clear about who has final approval of changes - clearly
define ramifications of accepting and implementing a
change to your action plans.
32. Avoid internal struggles, turf wars and silo thinking.
33. Get T-shirts (operations), Turtlenecks (marketing), and
Suits (management) to speak the same language.

About the author

Yanky Fachler, Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer of
Bookbuzz Executive Development
Yanky developed the Bookbuzz model in response to claims by
CEOs that their major challenge was unlocking the creative
potential of their time-poor top execs. Yanky was an awardwinning copywriter before creating High Octane Communication,
which designs and delivers corporate training in communication
skills, people skills and marketing skills.
Yanky is a published business author, broadcaster, conference
facilitator, speaking coach, networking facilitator, business startup expert, and a much-in-demand
motivational speaker who has
addressed audiences in Ireland, the
USA, the UK, Poland, Israel and the
Czech Republic. Yankys business
books include Bookbuzz Insights
2011, The Fire In The Belly an
exploration of the entrepreneurial
mindset (which has just been
published in a revised 10th anniversary
edition); Chutzpah unlocking the
maverick mindset for success; and
The Selling Conversation, coauthored with Dermot McConkey. Yanky is a former member of
the executive board of the International Amateur Theatre
Association.
To book Yanky for your next conference, meeting, offsite or
training event, email yanky@eircom.net
or call 353-86-8575162

About Bookbuzz
www.bookbuzz.biz

Bookbuzz is a proven facilitated process that unleashes the

collective wisdom of key teams. By exposing top executives to
the insights of the worlds greatest business minds, Bookbuzz
helps clients improve decision-making processes. Bookbuzz
significantly impacts on team dynamics and team trust, and
opens the team to divergent views.
Based on the pain points articulated by the client, Bookbuzz
suggests a short list of provocative books, and selects short
passages that attendees read before entering the facilitated
conversation. In a safe, non-threatening environment,
participants leave their performance hat at the door, and engage
in an open-ended discussion of key issues that rarely get aired in
management meetings.
Bookbuzz records and harnesses the actions resulting from the
facilitated discussions, and reports back to the client on the
insights gained and the proposed take away for the organisation.
For a chat about how Bookbuzz can help your company,
please contact Ron Immink: ron@bookbuzz.biz
Bookbuzz, Pembroke Hall, 38-39 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 234 3100

Become a published
non-fiction author
the ultimate in
Thought Leadership.
Youve completed your manuscript.
Now you want to see the fruits of
your labour turned into a high
quality
book.
Founded
by
experienced authors who between them have written and
published 25 books, The Varsity Press is ideal for non-fiction
authors who want their books professionally produced.
A-Z One-Stop service:
We offer the entire printing and publishing process:
editing, cover design, layout, printing and binding.
We offer you a choice of options: illustrations, paper
type, book size, font style, use of colour.
We partner with private and public sector institutions
to produce reports and proceedings.
We use the very latest digital printing technology.
We can help you market and sell your book through
bookshops and major online sites like Amazon.
Your own free page in our online catalogue.

The Varsity Press

YOUR PARTNER IN PUBLISHING

For a free Partnership Publishing consultation, please

call David Jones on 086 8826483.