Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

by Larry Bossidy

I was observing a meeting at a newly formed division of a company in the Fortune 20. The division, with some 20,000 employees, was the product of a merger in 2001 of two companies in the same industry. It had a new leadership team, and this was only its second meeting. The central issue for the leadership team was how to create a new culture to improve unacceptable performance. Return on capital was less than 6 percent, and shareholder value was being destroyed. The new CEO of the division and the leadership team knew that cost savings through synergies would not be enough to make the division an outstanding performer. The general practice in both merged businesses was not to hold people accountable for commitments they had made individually. Under the rubric of so-called teamwork, each management team performed poorly. For example, each had lost market share and suffered from lower return on investment because its people did not reduce costs in logistics ahead of competitors. This task is one that is truly under management’s control, but the leader in charge of logistics received the same reward as other members of the management team.