In 2002 Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan authored a highly regarded management book entitled “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done”. The book was lauded by such notable business leaders as Michael Dell – CEO of Dell Computer, L.R. Raymond – CEO of Exxon Mobil, and Ralph Larsen – CEO of Johnson & Johnson. To quote them, “Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes.”
I found even the authors’ choice of title instructive. The dictionary defines “discipline” as a regimen or set of rigorous practices that develops or improves a skill. It goes without saying that execution does not just happen reliably without some discipline. And yet most businesses today do not employ much rigor in getting things done.
Requests are vague, commitments by specific individuals to deliver outcomes by a certain date are vague and implicit, follow-up is haphazard, deliveries are not acknowledged and feedback is not aptly and concisely provided. Execution fails not from lack of intent or bad planning, but from poor discipline.
The disciplines discussed in the book revolve around the notions of making and keeping clear commitments, clarifying accountability, having an honest and open dialog, and following through. I have discussed each of these topics in other blog articles. The following are my top ten quotes from their book:
- To execute well there must be accountability, clear goals, accurate methods to measure performance, and the right rewards for people who perform…
- Follow-through is a constant and sequential part of execution. It ensures that you have established closure in the dialogue about who will be responsible for what and the specific milestones for measurement. The failure to establish this closure leaves the people who execute a decision or strategy without a clear picture of their role. As events unfold rapidly amid much uncertainty, follow-through becomes a much more intense process…
- When companies fail to deliver on their promises, the most frequent explanation is that the CEO’s strategy was wrong. But the strategy by itself is not often the cause. Strategies most often fail because they aren’t executed well. Things that are supposed to happen don’t happen…
- Typically the CEO and the senior leadership team allot less than half a day each year to review the plans – people, strategy, and operations. Typically the reviews are not particularly interactive. People sit passively watching PowerPoint presentations. They don’t ask questions. They don’t debate, and as a result they don’t get much useful outcome. People leave with no commitments to the action plans they’ve helped create. This is a formula for failure. You need robust dialogue to surface the realities of the business. You need accountability for results – discussed openly and agreed to by those responsible – to get things done and reward the best performers. You need follow-through to ensure the plans are on track…
- People engaged in the processes argue these questions, search out reality, and reach specific and practical conclusions. Everybody agrees about their responsibilities for getting things done, and everybody commits to those responsibilities…
- Furthermore, while stretch goals can be useful in forcing people to break old rules and do things better, they’re worse than useless if they’re totally unrealistic, or if the people who have to meet them aren’t given the chance to debate them beforehand and take ownership of them…
- Clear, simple goals don’t mean much if nobody takes them seriously. The failure to follow though is widespread in business, and a major cause of poor execution. How many meetings have you attended where people left without firm conclusions about who would do what and when? Everybody may have agreed the idea was good, but since nobody was named accountable for results, it doesn’t get done. Other things come up that seem more important or people decide it wasn’t such a good idea after all. (Maybe they even felt that way during the meeting, but didn’t speak up)…
- How many meetings have you attended where everyone seemed to agree at the end about what actions would be taken but nothing much actually happened as a result? These are the meetings where there’s no robust debate and therefore nobody states their misgivings. Instead, they simply let the project they didn’t like die a quiet death over time…
- Follow-through is the cornerstone of execution, and every leader who’s good at executing follows through religiously. Following through ensures that people are doing the things they committed to do, according to the agreed timetable. It exposes any lack of discipline and connection between ideas and actions, and forces the specificity that is essential to synchronize the moving parts of an organization. If people can’t execute the plan because of changed circumstances, follow-through ensures they deal swiftly and creatively with the new conditions…
- Finally, robust dialogue ends with closure. At the end of the meeting, people agree about what each person has to do and when. They’ve committed to it in an open forum; they are accountable for the outcomes. The reason most companies don’t face reality very well is that their dialogues are ineffective. And it shows in their results. Think about the meetings you’ve attended – those that were a hopeless waste of time and those that produced energy and great results. What was the difference? It was not the agenda, not whether the meeting started on time or how disciplined it was, and certainly not the formal presentations. No, the difference was in the quality of the dialogue.
That last line bears repeating: The difference that achieves great results is “the quality of the dialogue”. In other articles I talk about how software applications can instantiate and enforce the discipline that is necessary to execute effectively as well as elevate the quality of the dialogue around getting things done.