Execution by Larry Bossidy – Book Review
Amazon.com Review
Disciplines like strategy, leadership development, and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute.
Execution is “the missing link between aspirations and results,” and as such, making it happen is the business leader’s most important job. While failure in today’s business environment is often attributed to other causes, Bossidy and Charan argue that the biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution. They point out that without execution, breakthrough thinking on managing change breaks down, and they emphasize the fact that execution is a discipline to learn, not merely the tactical side of business. Supporting this with stories of the “execution difference” being won (EDS) and lost (Xerox and Lucent), the authors describe the building blocks–leaders with the right behaviors, a culture that rewards execution, and a reliable system for having the right people in the right jobs–that need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. Both Bossidy, CEO of Honeywell International, Inc., and Charan, advisor to corporate executives and author of such books as What the CEO Wants You to Know and Boards That Work, present experience-tested insight into how the smooth linking of these three processes can differentiate one company from the rest. Developing the discipline of execution isn’t made out to be simple, nor is this book a quick, easy read. Bossidy and Charan do, however, offer good advice on a neglected topic, making Execution a smart business leader’s guide to enacting success rather than permitting demise. –S. Ketchum
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
From Library Journal
Bossidy, an award-winning executive at General Electric and Allied Signal, came out of retirement to tend to Honeywell (and bring it back to prominence) after it failed to merge with General Electric. Charan has taught at Harvard and Kellogg Business Schools. Collaborating with editor and writer Burck, they present the viewpoint that execution (that is, linking a company’s people, strategy, and operations) is what will determine success in today’s business world. Bossidy and Charan aver that execution is a discipline integral to strategy, that it is the major job of any business leader hoping not just to be a success but to dominate a market, and that it is a core element of corporate culture. Details of both successful and unsuccessful executions at corporations such as Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and Xerox, to name a few, support not only their how-to method for bringing execution to the forefront but also the need for it. Each author addresses specific topics in paragraphs that begin with either “Larry” or “Ram,” and this easy style adds to the appeal of a very readable book. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
Steven J. Mayover, Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
The Essential Peter Drucker
The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials) (Paperback)
Amazon.com Review
Ever since his first book was published some six decades ago, Peter Drucker has been essential to everyone serious about the “management of an enterprise (and) the self-management of the individual, whether executive or professional, within an enterprise and altogether in our society of managed organizations.” This distinguished 30-year Claremont University professor has continuously identified critical principles in management, economics, politics, and the world in general. And he has redirected our thinking about them through more than two dozen books, including an autobiography and a couple of works of fiction. Now, with The Essential Drucker, he has overseen the compilation of his most important fundamentals into one indispensable book.
Reaching back as far as 1954 with his treatise “Management by Objectives and Self-Control” (“Each manager, from the ‘big boss’ down to the production foreman or the chief clerk, needs clearly spelled-out objectives” that clarify expected contributions “to the attainment of company goals in all areas of the business”), Drucker’s now-established ideas take on a surprising new relevancy when remixed equally pioneering ideas from the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. Between the thoughtful “Management as Social and Liberal Art” through the provocative “From Analysis to Perception–The New Worldview” (both originally published in 1988′s The New Realities), this book revisits some of modern management’s most inspired writing and presents it in a way that should appeal to both newcomers and those needing a refresher course on Drucker’s basic beliefs. –Howard Rothman
From Booklist
More Drucker! While the prolific nonagenarian and acclaimed management philosopher continues to write–Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999) is his most recent book–he and others have also been busy compiling and summarizing his most noteworthy work. Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998) is a collection of 13 significant articles that have appeared in the Harvard Business Review. John Flaherty, in Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind (1999), and Jack Beatty, in The World According to Peter Drucker (1998), both penned biographical portraits and bibliographic essays that are homages to Drucker and his thoughts. Now Drucker himself has picked 26 selections that consist of chapters excerpted from 10 of the 29 books he has written over the past 60 years. His goal is to offer a “coherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to Management” and to help those interested in learning more about his ideas determine “which of his writings are [most] essential.” David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –
Peter Drucker died in 2005
Peter Drucker Quotes
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the “naturals,” the ones who somehow know how to teach.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
The computer is a moron.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.
We can say with certainty – or 90% probability – that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
Good to Great
Amazon.com Review
Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, “Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?” In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11–including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo–and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn’t require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. –Harry C. Edwards
From Publishers Weekly
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins’s 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins’s crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City. At the heart of the findings about these companies’ stellar successes is what Collins calls the Hedgehog Concept, a product or service that leads a company to outshine all worldwide competitors, that drives a company’s economic engine and that a company is passionate about. While the companies that achieved greatness were all in different industries, each engaged in versions of Collins’s strategies. While some of the overall findings are counterintuitive (e.g., the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing), many of Collins’s perspectives on running a business are amazingly simple and commonsense. This is not to suggest, however, that executives at all levels wouldn’t benefit from reading this book; after all, only 11 companies managed to figure out how to change their B grade to an A on their own.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
