Book Summary/Review: Execution

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The following is a highlighted summary of the book, Execution, published by Crown Business.
The statements below are key points of the book as determined by James Altfeld and have been
made available at no charge to the user.

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
By Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Introduction
Too many leaders fool themselves into thinking their companies are well run. They’re
like the parents in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, all of whom think their
children are above average. Then the top performers at Lake Wobegon High School
arrive at the University of Minnesota or Colgate or Princeton and find out they’re average
or even below average. Similarly, when corporate leaders start understanding how the
GE’s and Emerson Electrics of this world are run—how superbly they get things
done—they discover how far they have to go before they become world class in
execution.

Here is the fundamental problem: People think of execution as the tactical side of
business, something leaders delegate while thy focus on the perceived “bigger” issues.
This idea is completely wrong. Execution is not just tactics—it is a discipline and a
system. It has to be built into a company’s strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the
leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it. He can delegate its substance.
We talk to many leaders who fall victim to the gap between promises they’ve made and
results their organizations delivered. They frequently tell us they have a problem with
accountability—people aren’t doing the things they’re supposed to do to implement a
plan. They desperately want to make changes of some kind, but what do they need to
change? They don’t know.

Execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that companies need to master in
order to have competitive advantage.

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