Book Review: Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

For the Christmas Holidays, we were off to Sugarbush, VT where we rent a condominium jointly with friends.  As we were packing the ski stuff from the basement before we left, I chanced upon some books lying there, and noticed the one titled 'Execution,' by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan which I had bought almost 8 years ago but never got around to reading it.  On a whim, I decided to take it with me and ended up reading it through these holidays.

A quick caveat to put aside.  I do wish folks would not use company names as examples in books.  The original one of these, "In Search of Excellence" by Tom Peters did that.  So did Jim Collins in "Good to Great".  And this book does it too.  What happens is that the authors use some company as an example to cite either a good or a bad practice.  And a decade has passed and things have changed (perhaps 180 degrees).  And that induces a chuckle in addition to both dating the book and casting doubt on the claim.

However, at least for this book, 'Execution', the above is only a caveat, since I found the book quite meaningful.  The reason I perhaps did not read it when I first bought it many years ago is that it felt genuinely elementary.  I was at the peak of my strategy work and when you are working on projects that are either reshaping a company or positioning oneself in new markets, the discipline of execution seems not only boring, but downright waste of time (not the importance of it mind you, but rather spending time thinking or reading about it).

However, now that I have moved on from the strategy function myself and am in a line management role with accountability for business results and accountability for a team and partner-relationships to deliver those results, I view this book in an entirely new light!

To share a personal reaction as I read this book ( a feeling I have not had since when I sat for my twelfth grade board examination!) - when I thought about implementing the ideas that Larry and Ram were talking about in their book on Tuesday morning Jan 2nd when I return to work, my stomach tightens into a knot!  The level of sustained focus, discipline, follow through, attention to detail they expect in execution is non-trivial to say the least.  Again, conceptually easy to grasp; but quite daunting if one thinks about putting them into real practice on a sustained basis throughout an organization!

Very briefly, they touch upon the strategic, people and operational processes as three core processes that are building blocks for execution and show how the three are related to each other.  And through their experience and examples demonstrate how to implement each of these effectively.  One particular insight that I liked that Larry made in particular was, 'just because an executive is good in her current job, does not mean she is ready or capable for the next'.  Which is similar to what our Chairman says, "do the job you have been assigned, not your previous one."

Of course with a background in engineering (and manufacturing to boot), this whole notion of execution and organizing to execute is not alien to me at all.  And in reality, my immersion for a long time in strategic work was what I needed to be more lithe in my thinking.  However executing by one self or with a small team in a localized way on a specific deterministic engineering problem is one challenge.  But to do the same with large revenues and large teams at stake and working through your teams through other teams with high week-to-week dependence on market conditions is another challenge.

This timely book was very worthwhile spending time with.  Dated examples notwithstanding, one of the more immediately useful and relevant books in the business genre that I have read in a long time.