Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

287 Pages·2002·0.992 MB·English

by  Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck

ex-e-cu-tion (ek si kyoo shun), n. 1. The
missing link. 2. The main reason companies
fall short of their promises. 3. The gap
between what a company’s leaders want to
achieve and the ability of their organizations
to deliver it. 4. Not simply tactics, but a sys­
tem of getting things done through question­
ing, analysis, and follow-through. A discipline
for meshing strategy with reality, aligning peo­
ple with goals, and achieving the results
promised. 5. A central part of a company’s
strategy and its goals and the major job of any
leader in business. 6. A discipline requiring a
comprehensive understanding of a business,
its people, and its environment. 7. The way to
link the three core processes of any business—
the people process, the strategy, and the oper­
ating plan—together to get things done on time.
8. A method for success discovered and
revealed in 2002 by Larry Bossidy and Ram
Charan in Execution: The Discipline of
Getting Things Done.
Pr evious books by Ram Charan
What the CEO Wants You to Know

Boards That Work

Every Business Is a Growth Business (coauthor)

The Leadership Pipeline (coauthor)

E-Board Strategies (coauthor)

Strategic Management: A Casebook in Policy and

Planning (coauthor)
EXECUTION
THE DISCIPLINE OF GETTING THINGS DONE
L A R RY B O S S I DY A N D

R A M CH A R A N

with Charles Burck
Copyright © 2002 by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or trans­
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the pub­
lisher.
Published by Crown Business, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com
CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and the Rising Sun colophon is
a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bossidy, Larry.
Execution : the discipline of getting things done / Larry Bossidy
& Ram Charan ; with Charles Burck.—1st ed.
1. Management. 2. Performance. 3. Achievement motivation.
I. Charan, Ram. II. Burck, Charles. III. Title.
HD31 .B626 2002
658—dc21 2002018743
ISBN 1-400-04617-3
v1.0
To the hundreds of people who touched our
business lives and influenced the thoughts artic­
ulated in this book. A special recognition to
Jack Welch, who in our time was the predomi­
nant practitioner of “getting things done.”
Larry Bossidy
Ram Charan

CONTENTS

Introduction 1

PART I: WHY EXECUTION IS NEEDED
1:
The Gap Nobody Knows 13

2:
The Execution Difference 35

PART II: THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF EXECUTION

3:
Building Block One: The Leader’s Seven

Essential Behaviors 57

4:
Building Block Two: Creating the

Framework for Cultural Change 85

5:
Building Block Three: The Job No Leader

Should Delegate—Having the Right People

in the Right Place 109
CONTENTS
PART III: THE THREE CORE PROCESSES
OF EXECUTION
6:
The People Process: Making the Link with

Strategy and Operations 141

7:
The Strategy Process: Making the Link with

People and Operations 178

8:
How to Conduct a Strategy Review 207

9:
The Operations Process: Making the Link

with Strategy and People 226

Conclusion: Letter to a New Leader 265

Index 271

viii
EXECUTION
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