Ruthless Execution: What Business Leaders Do When Their Companies Hit the Wall (Financial Times (Prentice Hall)) (Hardcover)

by Amir Hartman (Author) "Ruthless execution is the method and strategies that business leaders employ to break through performance walls..." (more)
Key Phrases: strategic recalibration, business criticality, ruthless execution, John Chambers, Wall Street, Jack Welch (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Today's business leaders need a radically different skill from their recent predecessors: they must know how to know how to manage through adversity while preparing their companies for a new rebirth of success. In Ruthless Execution, Amir Hartman, author of the bestselling NETREADY, identifies the central ingredients that help certain companies to get beyond the wall and thrive--and show how to instill these ingredients in your organization. You will learn when and how to recalibrate the balance between performance and growth; how to define a coherent, tightly-drawn business philosophy that maps to specific actions; new ways to promote accountability and business alignment; and how to use performance metrics without burying people in meaningless trivia. Also discover how to promote real discipline: the ability to get the job done quickly, efficiently, and effortlessly--without bureaucracy. Next, you learn how to develop stronger "critical capabilities" for understanding and managing complexity. Along the way, the authors present case studies of world-class enterprises that have used these strategies to achieve breakthrough success.Watch John Chambers maneuver Cisco through the telecom collapse; Lou Gerstner impose powerful new discipline at IBM; Harry Kraemer realign Baxter with transformed markets; Dan Vasella transform Novartis through mergers; and many more. ..all unified by one central factor: ruthless execution.

From the Back Cover

Ruthless Execution focuses on today's #1 business leadership challenge: managing adversity while preparing your company for a rebirth of success. Amir Hartman identifies the central ingredients that help companies get beyond the wall to thrive--and demonstrates exactly how to instill these ingredients in your organization.

You'll learn when and how to strategically recalibrate and balance performance and growth; new ways to promote accountability; how to use performance metrics without burying your people in trivia; and how to promote real discipline without creating bureaucracy. You'll also discover which critical capabilities are keys to performance breakthroughs.

Along the way, the author presents case studies of leading companies that have used these strategies to overcome stalled performance. Baxter, Novartis, Honeywell, IBM, Cisco, and more--all different, yet all unified by one common element: ruthless execution.

• What to do when you "hit the wall"--Beyond "rude awakenings" to effective action--and new success
• Seeing the realities for what they are--Accurate, objective assessments of your enterprise and your marketplace
• Breaking through to new growth: three core strategies--Strategies based on productivity, talent management, and M & As
• Ruthless execution at work--Leadership, strategy, cost control, governance, and more
• Cisco: Surviving catastrophe and trying to come back stronger--Retaining market dominance through the dot.com/telecom collapse
• Mass layoffs and other sure-to-fail strategies--What doesn't work--and what to do instead

Using adversity to lay the groundwork for breakthrough success

• What to do when growth slows, innovation stalls, and times get tough
• Coping with rude awakenings: strategic recalibration and tactical excellence
• New insights from IBM, Cisco, Honeywell, GE, Novartis, Baxter, and beyond
• By Amir Hartman, author of the global business bestseller Net Ready

What happens when yesterday's growth strategies and business models stop working?

Most companies that "hit the wall" never get past it. But a rare few have discovered the secrets of recharging growth and innovation. Ruthless Execution shows how to apply the lessons they've learned to engineer your own resurgence.

It's about taking stock of where you really stand, choosing the best strategy for renewal, and executing on that strategy with unprecedented clarity and tenacity.

It's about leadership, values, and governance. It's about cost control, productivity, and priorities. Above all, it's about doing what great companies like IBM, Novartis, Baxter and Cisco have already done or are in the midst of doing again: getting beyond adversity to breakthrough success.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: FT Press (July 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131018841
• ISBN-13: 978-0131018846
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #547,323 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...., January 17, 2004

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ruthless Execution

Ignore this book's somewhat overheated title and concentrate on Hartman's core concepts which he develops with meticulous care. He suggests a number of strategies and tactics by which business leaders can respond effectively when they encounter what Hartman calls the "rude awakening that occurs when a company has enjoyed consistently high-level performance, but comes up against some new factor: a downward turn in the economy, a lack of product innovation, growth that occurs too rapidly, a missed market opportunity, or as is most often the case, ineffective execution." Hartman organizes his material within five Parts which consist of a total of 12 individual chapters: Managing Through Tough Times, Leadership: Dealing with Rude Awakenings, How to Play the Game, Breaking Through the Wall, and What It All Means. The focus of Hartman's book is on "business reversals and the need to shepherd business leaders through those reversals because, quite frankly, corporations are passing through a new, more complex, more worrying age. The long and short of it is that it's far more difficult to be a successful business leader today than ever before."

The statistics support Hartman's last observation. In 2001, for example, 257 public companies (with a total of $258 billion in assets) declared bankruptcy. In 2002, another 67 did so. Go back even further to the 43 companies which Peters and Waterman quite properly praised in In Search of Excellence (1982). Most no longer qualify according to the criteria by which they were selected...and several do not exist at all. Scary? You bet.

In Chapter 8, Hartman offers a "Ruthless Execution Checklist" which can be of substantial value to all organizations, regardless of size or nature:

1. Do you have a cost and working capital management program that is driven through the business?

[NOTE: For small companies, the more appropriate question is "Is there a sound reason for the expenditure of each hour and each dollar?"]

2. Do you have a proactive and disciplined approach to identifying and assessing potential acquisitions and divestitures?

[NOTE: For small companies, the more appropriate question is "What should you add to what you now offer? What should you eliminate?"]

3. Do you regularly assess whether the corporate center is adding distinctive value to each business unit?

[NOTE: For small companies, the more appropriate question is "Does everything you do add value to each customer relationship?"]

4. Do you effectively and swiftly manage out non-performers?

[NOTE: Extensive research indicates that, on average, each mishire costs 24 times her or his annual salary. Hire slowly but fire FAST.]

Most organizations now face serious challenges. Many of those organizations will not survive. For their decision-makers, what to do? To his credit, Hartman does not propose a series of specific (one size fits all) answers to that question. Rather, in the final chapter, he includes a "Ruthless Execution Index" with instructions as to how to use it. It remains for each reader to provide correct responses to the 54 statements which comprise the "Index." Once this exercise has been completed, the far greater challenge -- obviously -- is to take appropriate action. Hartman can assist with that process. I also recommend a careful reading of Bossidy and Charan's Execution, Hammer's The Agenda, Collins' Good to Great, and Kaplan and Norton's The Strategy-Focused Organization.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Familiar stories, great execution strategies, November 27, 2003

By	Max More "Max More" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What do you do if your company has been a high performer but then hits the wall? The economy may have slowed down, your product innovation has dropped off, growth has been too fast, or execution has been ineffective. According to Amir Hartman, what your company needs is ruthless execution (a term Hartman coined with John Sifonis while working with Hewlett-Packard). This consists of the method and strategies that Hartman's research suggests business leaders have employed to break through performance walls.

Ruthless execution consists of strategies organized into three categories: leadership, governance, and critical capabilities, each of which contains several practices. Hartman does not guarantee success in breaking through the wall if you use any of these strategies. But these approaches are common to those who have succeeded in the past and were used in the order presented in the book.

When troubled or uncertain times arrive, leaders typically but fruitlessly adopt either the "Run-and-Gun strategy" or the "Slash-and-Burn" strategy. According to Hartman, a third approach of ruthless execution works far better for most business leaders. In this book, he has no interest in identifying the major causes of companies hitting the wall. No matter what the cause it is an inability to focus and execute that is at the core of the problem.

By studying a diverse set of industries and companies of all sizes, using surveys, company documents, research reports, publicly available financial data (10-Ks), and interviews with key business leaders, Hartman believes he has discovered the practices used by those companies who succeeded in breaking through the wall. Much of the book consists of overviews of these efforts, many of them familiar to business readers, including Jack Welch's time at GE, Louis Gerstner's turnaround of IBM, Larry Bossidy's famous execution at Honeywell, along with Baxter, Novartis, and Cisco.

Ruthless execution proceeds through the stages of leadership, governance, and critical capabilities. The first part of the leadership aspect is strategic recalibration: the act of validating the direction and focus a company is going to take. This involves rearranging the portfolio of business initiatives (Hartman offers four rules for portfolio management), assessing how resources are allocated to initiatives, and setting a course while finding a healthy balance between performance and growth efforts.

After strategic recalibration, the second leadership practice is devising a business philosophy. Hartman prefers "business philosophy" to "organizational culture" because a culture may endure over generations but he is referring to the view that comes from the top and typically is identified with the CEO. He holds up Jack Welch as exemplifying the creation and promulgation of a business philosophy.

The second part of ruthless execution is governance. This consists of: Accountability - using a set of "alignment" strategies; Performance management system - using a small number of critical financial, strategic, and operating metrics (10 principles are offered); Discipline - communicating messages that are consistent, straightforward, and easily comprehended.

The final part of ruthless execution is critical capabilities: These are the specific actions that executives drive to break through the wall. They are the three critical skills and delivery capabilities with which business leaders need to be equipped: Productivity management - cost and working capital management, productivity management inc. technology-driven productivity improvement (which is aimed at optimizing, reconstructing, inventing and for which Hartman outlines six principles); Talent management - hiring the best talent and getting rid of underperformers; Focused corporate transactions - mergers and acquisitions, and divestitures.

The final chapter introduces a Ruthless Execution Index intended to help executives who want to understand where to improve their ruthless execution. While some executives will find much of the material familiar, the book gathers and organizes many aspects of the execution so vital to continuing and recapturing success.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just "Me-too" advice, July 31, 2003

By	David Gautschi (CCG Group, Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

Hartman presents trenchant analysis and documentation of an endemic problem in business: hitting the wall can happen to an enterprise anywhere, anytime. Discussions of the case studies are compelling. More importantly, the revealing of the many dimensions of what needs to be done to turn things around and how to do that are the core contributions of the book. Highly recommended read for senior and top managers...especially for those who think they are enjoying success.