Book review of Larry Bossidy's & Ram Charan's best selling business book.

1. Execution
By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Book Review By Mark Angelucci
(August 2014)

2. Leaders Run 3 Core Procedures
(Can’t Delegate These)
1. Picking Other Leaders
2. Setting The Strategic Direction
3. Conducting Operations

3. Seven Behaviors
1. Know Your People And Business
2. Insist On Realism
3. Set Clear Goals And Priorities (3 or 4)
4. Follow Through
5. Reward The Doers
6. Expand Peoples Capabilities
7. Know Yourself

4. The inability to act decisively, which translates
into the ability to execute, is rooted in corporate
culture. Leaders create a culture of
indecisiveness, and leaders can break it.

5. Framework For Creating
Cultural Change
The culture of a company is the behavior of its
leaders. Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and
tolerate. You change the culture of a company by
changing the behavior of its leaders.
Decisiveness- the ability to make difficult decisions
swiftly and well and acting on them

6. Following Through- The cornerstone of
execution, and every leader who’s good at
executing follows through religiously. This
ensures that people are doing the things
committed to, according to the agreed timetable.

7. Building the Strategic Plan
This clearly lays out, in specific terms the direction
of the unit. where it is now, where it will be in the
future and how it will get there. The leader of the
unit has to own the strategy development. It
provides an outline of the best way to grow the
business profitability and what the obstacles to
growth are. The leader has to take an objective
view whether the current organization can execute
the plan.

8. The strategy process shows where a business
wants to go. The people process (Leadership
Assessment, Succession Planning, Retention Risk
Assessment, Talent Reviews) defines who's going
to get it there. The operating plan provides the
path for those people. It breaks long-term
objectives into short-term targets. It puts realty
behind the numbers. It will include initiatives your
unit will complete within one year to reach stated
objectives in your strategic plan.

9. Quarterly reviews provide basis to compare results
against the plan. If the plan (or portions of the
plan) are off target plans must be developed and
acted on to provide a path to get back on plan.
saying the next quarter will improve is
unacceptable. It’s an operating plan and the
results will be dealt with. Any delay in acting
potentially puts the entire plan at risk if the “hoped
for” or “expected” improvement in the next period
doesn't materialize.

10. Final Thoughts
In my opinion the book does an excellent job of
linking all the behaviors and processes together in
a way that they reinforce one another. The hallmark
of execution isn't wasting effort but applying it to
achieving the plans of the unit. The particular
examples provided in the book allow you to
quickly incorporate the concepts into your
business.

11. Thank You For Viewing
Mark Angelucci
August 2014