The Strategy of Execution: A Five Step Guide for Turning Vision into Action

The Strategy of Execution: A Five Step Guide for Turning Vision into Action
Author: Liz Mellon
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0071815325

YOU HAVE A BRILLIANT NEW STRATEGY. NOW IT'S TIME TO EXECUTE. Businesses spend a combined total of $47 billion annually on strategy consulting. Approximately 90 percent of strategic change initiatives fail to deliver the intended results. Something isn't adding up. As companies all over the world concentrate on revisiting, revising, and remaking their strategies, they forget the next step: making sure the strategy happens. So it turns out that billions of dollars are spent on brilliant ideas--but not brilliant results. In this groundbreaking book, business strategy experts Liz Mellon and Simon Carter provide a solution: THE STRATEGY OF EXECUTION. The authors break down the process of ensuring that your new strategy translates into measurable profits and growth into five fundamental and profoundly important steps: MOBILIZE THE VILLAGE: Get your senior executives to embrace the new strategy and actively engage with it. GATHER THE ELDERS: Build a small team of the very highest figures in the corporation to lead strategic change. POWER UP FEELING: Don't overthink it; trust your instincts as much as your intellect. ENERGIZE PEOPLE: Create a culture of communication, ownership, and followthrough of strategic objectives. BUILD ENDURANCE: Drive individual and organizational resilience to play the long game and hardwire change throughout systems and organizational structures to maintain momentum. In the final chapter, the authors illustrate their process in action through a detailed case study of BPB PLC--a century-old building material company that applied these five steps to make extraordinary strategic change happen. You can lead positive change in your company. A strategy is just words on paper until it's executed with care and smarts. Use The Strategy of Execution as a blueprint for long-term business success. There are a lot of smart people coming up with innovative business strategies today. Very few of them, however, are executing them. The gap between strategy and execution has never been wider. The Strategy of Execution provides a practical approach to the work that must be done after a business strategy is agreed upon. "This is a highly readable guide to one of the most under-researched areas of strategy; execution. Strategists have always had more solutions than there are problems, but the issue of what to do when they leave the building has not been satisfactorily addressed. Liz Mellon and Simon Carter have put together a clear framework for execution illustrated with countless examples. Industry leaders are called ‘executives’ for a reason. This crisp and accessible book should be their mandatory reading." -- PAUL WILLMAN, Professor of Management, London School of Economics "This is a clearly written and very readable book, with key insights into the challenges of implementing a strategy and good examples from individuals and organizations that have brought about successful change." -- ANDREW HOBDAY, Chief Sustainability Officer, Mars Incorporated "One aspect of leadership that has always puzzled me is how a leader directs change for the good of the organization and the people. Too often, when a leader talks about change, employees expect the worst. This insightful book lays out a step-by-step guide on how to execute a strategy with warmth and conviction, bringing people with you rather than dragging them, fearful, behind you." -- KEVIN KELLY, former CEO, Heidrick & Struggles

Execution

Execution
Author: Larry Bossidy
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2009-11-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307591468

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than two million copies in print! The premier resource for how to deliver results in an uncertain world, whether you’re running an entire company or in your first management job. “A must-read for anyone who cares about business.”—The New York Times When Execution was first published, it changed the way we did our jobs by focusing on the critical importance of “the discipline of execution”: the ability to make the final leap to success by actually getting things done. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan now reframe their empowering message for a world in which the old rules have been shattered, radical change is becoming routine, and the ability to execute is more important than ever. Now and for the foreseeable future: • Growth will be slower. But the company that executes well will have the confidence, speed, and resources to move fast as new opportunities emerge. • Competition will be fiercer, with companies searching for any possible advantage in every area from products and technologies to location and management. • Governments will take on new roles in their national economies, some as partners to business, others imposing constraints. Companies that execute well will be more attractive to government entities as partners and suppliers and better prepared to adapt to a new wave of regulation. • Risk management will become a top priority for every leader. Execution gives you an edge in detecting new internal and external threats and in weathering crises that can never be fully predicted. Execution shows how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a “vision” and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism. With paradigmatic case histories from the real world—including examples like the diverging paths taken by Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Charles Prince at Citigroup—Execution provides the realistic and hard-nosed approach to business success that could come only from authors as accomplished and insightful as Bossidy and Charan.

Strategy-in-Action

Strategy-in-Action
Author: Thomas D. Zweifel
Publisher: BookBaby
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2015-11-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781491031100

The meltdown of stalwart companies from AIG to JAL to Lehman and government crises from Greece to Spain make it abundantly clear: With economic uncertainty and rapid innovation, empowered consumers and free agents, and the constant pressure to be faster, better and cheaper, the established wisdom on strategic planning works no more. Once hailed as “brilliant” by experts, it is the very approach that got so many companies into the mess in the first place. This path-breaking book shows how successful organizations of all stripes transformed their strategy paradigm based on Strategy-In-Action and the power of human capital: standing in the future, listening for vital intelligence in far-flung locations, giving voice to dissenting views, maximizing ownership by stakeholders, especially implementers, getting quick wins and screening out losers quickly in the action. Above all, successful companies of all sizes have ended the long-standing divorce of strategy—hatched by a select few behind closed doors—from action, the supreme test of strategy. Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel, strategy and performance expert, gamechanger and author of seven leadership books such as "Communicate or Die," "Culture Clash 2," "Leadership in 100 Days" and the award-winning "The Rabbi and the CEO," has teamed up with Edward J. Borey, CEO, corporate strategist and turnaround guru. Together, they bring to bear their combined half-century experience in innovating strategy design and execution at Fortune 500, midsize enterprises and startups as well as large public-sector and UN agencies. The result: a turn-key methodology for senior managers who need adaptive and people-centered strategy that yields quick wins and stands the test of time.

The Executive Update

The Executive Update
Author: Ian Mann
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2017-02-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1776091353

Business ideas and practices are constantly changing, but no manager has the time to read all the business books and articles that come out in a year. In this book, Ian Mann does all the work for you, trawling through recent business publications and distilling the most important new insights and developments. The Executive Update covers topics such as technology and mechanisation; the structure of organisations; obligations to stakeholders other than shareholders; leadership; the changing nature of work; psychology in business; creativity; the importance of simplicity; and the strange world of money and banking; and strategy in a fast-changing world. These subjects are explored in a clear, comprehensible way, and presented in easily digestible and thought-provoking chapters. This is the ideal book for people who want an easy way to keep up with the latest developments in business and management thinking, and will appeal to junior managers and senior executives alike.

Bold Influence

Bold Influence
Author: Kevin Peterson
Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1644718324

The objective to this book is to provide practical techniques to no longer just sit through situations as a passive victim, tolerating perpetual inaction. Be the one to set the tone for healthy collaboration and actively develop those peers that will be constructive partners to "help solve the ills of the enterprise," by stepping out from behind the conference table and exhibit the boldness to influence your peers. This book provides a set of twenty-four-key takeaway insights, some of which are listed below, brought to life with a host of real-world business stories that provide tangible guidance on how to apply these concepts to make a bold difference in your sphere of influence, whether in business or in your personal life. - Quality of character is prerequisite to earn the right to influence. - Influence leaders get assigned to the "hairiest problems." - Influence leaders know when to stop talking and act. - Influence leaders wear the risk of failure on behalf of their team. - Influence leaders do not quit until they succeed.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management (including featured article "Leading Change," by John P. Kotter)

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management (including featured article
Author: Harvard Business Review
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2011-02-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1422172066

Most company's change initiatives fail. Yours don't have to. If you read nothing else on change management, read these 10 articles (featuring “Leading Change,” by John P. Kotter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you spearhead change in your organization. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management will inspire you to: Lead change through eight critical stages Establish a sense of urgency Overcome addiction to the status quo Mobilize commitment Silence naysayers Minimize the pain of change Concentrate resources Motivate change when business is good This collection of best-selling articles includes: featured article "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" by John P. Kotter, "Change Through Persuasion," "Leading Change When Business Is Good: An Interview with Samuel J. Palmisano," "Radical Change, the Quiet Way," "Tipping Point Leadership," "A Survival Guide for Leaders," "The Real Reason People Won't Change," "Cracking the Code of Change," "The Hard Side of Change Management," and "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change."

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Good Strategy Bad Strategy
Author: Richard Rumelt
Publisher: Currency
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-07-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307886239

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, he debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” He introduces nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—that are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning, and uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.

Playing to Win

Playing to Win
Author: Alan G. Lafley
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 142218739X

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

Deep Dive

Deep Dive
Author: Rich Horwath
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2009-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1608320332

Get competitive by learning to think strategically.The inability to set good strategy can sink a company¿and a leader¿s career. A recent Wall Street Journal study revealed that the most sought-after executive skill is strategic thinking, but only three out of ten managers have this skill set.Horwath explains the three keys to strategic thinking, breaks them down into simple, attainable skills, and gives you practical tools to apply them every day, providing managers with a clear path to mastery of the three disciplines: 1. Acumen¿generate critical insights through a step-by-step evaluation of your business and its environment2. Allocation¿focus your limited resources through strategic trade-offs 3. Action¿implement a system to guarantee effective execution of strategy at all levels of your organization Based on new research with senior executives from 150 companies and the author¿s experience as a thought-leading strategist, Deep Dive is the first book to focus on the most important level of strategy¿you. Armed with this knowledge and dozens of effective tools, you can become a truly strategic leader for your organization.--Rich Horwath is the president of the Strategic Thinking Institute, a former chief strategy officer, and professor of strategy at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. As a thought-leading strategist, he has worked with such giants as Adidas, Amgen, and Pfizer. He is the author of four books and more than fifty articles on strategic thinking and has been profiled in business publications around the world, including Investor¿s Business Daily.