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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seminal contribution to organizational alignment and strategic execution, January 3, 2008
This review is from: Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It Done (Hardcover)
While the book is titled, "Executing the Strategy" it might more accurately be titled "Organizational Alignment" - strategy being only one, albeit the most central, of the domains of the Authors' brilliant and comprehensive Strategic Execution Framework (SEF).
Readers may miss one of the more subtle but most important gifts of the book which is to recognize that most failures in strategic execution come from not managing the interfaces between the various domains of the corporate organism, defined in the SEF: Ideation (Identity, Purpose, Long-Range Intention), Vision (Strategy, Goals, Metrics), Nature( Strategy, Culture, Organizational Structure), Engagement (Strategy, Portfolio Management), Synthesis (Portfolio Management, Program Management, Project Management), and Transition (Program Management, Project Management and Operations).
Theory of Constraints and Six Sigma aficionados take note: the greatest unaccounted for source of variability in organizational performance occurs at the interfaces between these SEF domains. Today, most organizations do not manage these interfaces at more than a superficial level, if at all. Further, the strategy domain directly interfaces with more areas of the corporate organism than any other: culture, structure, goals, metrics, and portfolio. It is no wonder that 70-90% of companies are consistently failing to execute strategies successfully.
The book succeeds well in setting out the SEF, but don't expect guidance on how to go about setting vision or strategy or improving project or portfolio management, changing culture, or setting the right metrics. Rather, each of these domains represents large bodies of knowledge, and this book's purpose is to identify them, and define the interfaces between them. The subtitle, "How to Break it Down & Get it Done" might imply the presence of more nitty-gritty how-to's than this book sets out to provide.
Another major takeaway is that the "lowly" discipline of project management will be the cornerstone of successfully executing strategy in combination with the SEF. Strategy is not just about upper management setting a bold vision in a weekend retreat and saying, "make it so". Strategic planning must account for the ripple effects through all of the organizational domains, and projects need to be chartered, resourced and managed between and within domains for the strategy to be carried off successfully.
The authors provide numerous compelling real-world examples; including many from their own consulting practices to demonstrate how correct organizational alignment leads to success and misalignment leads to failure. The authors have particular experience and success with larger organizations, where the SEF particularly shines. This book is an outstanding and seminal contribution to organizational alignment and strategic execution.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EXCEPTIONALLY USEFUL AND INSIGHTFUL!, December 28, 2007
This review is from: Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It Done (Hardcover)
Books on strategy formulation are plentiful, but relatively few have been written on executing strategy. This book is a major contribution in this arena, providing an insightful path for moving from strategy to ongoing operations.
The authors provide a useful six-part model ("strategic execution framework"). As very briefly highlighted by the authors, the six parts are:
- clarifying and communicating identity, purpose, and long-term intention;
- aligning strategy, culture and structure;
- translating long-term intentions into goals, metrics and strategy;
- engaging strategy via the project investments stream;
- monitoring and continuously aligning project work with strategy; and
- transferring projects to operations.
A chapter is devoted to each of these aspects of the model. Reading the chapters will enable you to fully understand and appreciate its usefulness in operational context and from a leadership standpoint.
A keystone is the role of project management in transforming strategic intentions into operational realities.
This book is well organized, crisply written, and rich with practical content, including diagrams, tables, and rating scales to measure your organization. Overall, the authors have created a standout-achievement that will be of value to any organizational leader.
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30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible!, July 11, 2008
This review is from: Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It Done (Hardcover)
It's hard to get positive about a management book that begins with a ridiculous quote: "There may be a thousand little choices in a day. All of them count." Ever hear of Pareto's Law?
The first paragraph then tells us that "The spectacular flameouts of Carly Fiorina at HP, John Akers at IBM, John Sculley at Apple, and Pehr Gyllenhammar at Volvo are merely a few high-profile examples among thousands of CEOs whose strategies fail every year because of poor execution."
But it's just not true. Gyllenhammar failed because his strategy (make factory jobs less repetitious, and more interesting) created higher costs and lower quality - especially vs. the Toyota Production System. Carly Fiorina failed partly because of her abrasive personality, poor focus (her management meetings were dreaded), and lack of a quantitative approach, but mostly because her focus on creating a single sales force created poor performance, reduced accountability, and high costs; similarly, keeping the PC and printer units together allowed the latter to cover up the former's weaknesses. John Akers made three enormous strategic errors - failing to see the future in manufacturing PCs (allowing Intel to create a commodity market that IBM was unable to add significant value to), allowing Microsoft to take over the market for PC software, and not moving to solidify IBM as an overall problem-solver instead of hardware seller. Finally, John Sculley wanted to destroy Apple's competitive advantage (its easier-to-use software and uniqueness) and become a commodity PC producer selling to large corporations.
Summarizing, "Executing Strategy" makes two unrecoverable blunders in the first half-page, goes on to conclude that "something like 90% of companies consistently fail to execute strategies effectively," and then focuses the next 260 pages on good execution (extremely likely, given its flaunting of Pareto's insights) of what are highly likely to be flawed strategies.
Readers would be much better served reading material that guides deciding what business their company is in (Drucker), determining the relative roles of low costs and high quality, fast new product development (possibly each has a role in differing areas of the company), fast operational change, and how to establish a sustainable competitive advantage.
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