Execution -The Discipline Of Getting Things Done (Ebook)

When a company executes well, its people are not victims of mistakes like this. If Honeywell had had an execution culture, either the turbogenerator would have been built correctly from the outset, or it would have been fixed soon enough to be successful. And when a company executes well, its people are not brought to their knees by changes in the business environment. After the tragic events of September 11, we had to tear up our aerospace operating plan for 2001.

But we put together a new one in ten days. We identified as best we could the shortfalls of revenue, and we decided what we’d have to do to offset them with cost cuts. We also put a team in place to coordinate and ramp up all of our security products, and we reenergized our
defense marketing folks.

There aren’t many companies where leaders would produce a new operating plan for a major part of the company in ten days. More often there’d be a lot of talk and off-site conferences but no action. That’s one distinction between companies that execute, and those that don’t.
Too many leaders fool themselves into thinking their companies are well run.