Execution ^{2nd Ed.}

Updated with a new introduction that addresses our current financial and economic crisis, Execution, one of the most influential and successful business books of our time (with more than two million copies sold worldwide), is more relevant and useful than ever before.

Today, we are witnessing a permanent "resetting" of the global business environment. The old normal is gone and won't be coming back. When Execution was first published in 2002, 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 — as the recent global paroxysm has demonstrated — 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 recent examples like the divergent 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.

• Resetting Execution for a Time of Crisis
• Introduction
• Part I: Why Execution Is Needed
  1. The Gap Nobody Knows
  2. The Execution Difference
• Part II: The Building Blocks of Execution
  3. Building Block One: The Leader's Seven Essential Behaviors
  4. Building Block Two: Creating the Framework for Cultural Change
  5. Building Block Three: The Job No Leader Should Delegate — Having the Right People in the Right Place
• Part III: The Three Core Processes of Execution
  6. The People Process: Making the Link with Strategy and Operations
  7. The Strategy Process: Making the Link with People and Operations
  8. How to Conduct a Strategy Review
  9. The Operations Process: Making the Link with Strategy and People
  • Conclusion: Letter to a New Leader

Boringly written, self-promoting and hero-worshipping. Badly researched and full of plattitudes. Well, when that is said, it has some good points too. It is one of very few books on Execution, but it fails to live up to the promise of the title, as it contains very little advice. But it contains a simple to memorise, three point structure (strategy, operations, people), which is not really rocket science, but may seem so to some CEOs that I know.

Charan's parts can be better read in his other books and their Jack Welch worshipping can be annoying at times.

All in all, it's not really bad, but mediocre at best, especially after all the hype surronding the title, but I should have understood this when I read the introduction to their second edition ("updated for the new times", wtf?).

You can safely skip this one.