CEOs regularly identify strategic execution as their biggest challenge, and the top priority facing today's business leaders. Based on their research with senior executives across a variety of industries—and including firms like Marriott, Microsoft, SunTrust, UPS, and Vail Resorts—Kenneth J. Carrig and Scott A. Snell have distilled the elements that are most critical for execution. This book addresses the challenges of execution, why it matters, and why the approach remains elusive. It introduces an integrated framework for understanding four priorities underlying execution excellence. Ultimately, it all comes down to alignment, agility, ability, and architecture. The authors lay out a process for applying the framework, helping business leaders to diagnose their challenges and to determine their path toward breakthrough performance.

Presenting the most recent developments in research and strategy, this text applies these theories and illustrates their implementation in business cases.

#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.

Every day on the job, you face common challenges. And you need immediate solutions to those challenges. The Pocket Mentor Series can help. Each book in the series is packed with handy tools, self-tests, and real-life examples to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and hone critical skills. Whether you're at your desk, in a meeting, or on the road, these portable, concise guides enable you to tackle the daily demands of your work with speed, savvy, and effectiveness. The latest volume in the series: Executing Strategy That strategy you've defined for your group is brilliant--promising better market share, higher profits, or some other impressive business result. But your strategy won't deliver the expected outcomes if you and your group don't execute it that is, if you don't put it into action by implementing the right strategic initiatives. This volume helps you master the challenging art of strategy execution. You'll learn how to: -Craft action plans for the strategic initiatives required to meet your goals -Keep your action plans on course despite the inevitable setbacks and surprises -Cultivate employees' sense of ownership and accountability for your plans -Create a group culture in which everyone views strategy as their job

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

Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it -- and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, leading consultant and Wharton professor Lawrence Hrebiniak offers the first comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world. Drawing on his unsurpassed experience, Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize, and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies. Next, he offers a systematic roadmap for execution that encompasses every key success factor: organizational structure, coordination, information sharing, incentives, controls, change management, culture, and the role of power and influence in your business. Making Strategy Work concludes with a start-to-finish case study showing how to use Hrebeniak's ideas to address one of today's most difficult business execution challenges: ensuring the success of a merger or acquisition.

How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.