Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

by Larry Bossidy

When things are running well, I spend 20 percent of my time on the people process. When I’m rebuilding an organization, it’s 40 percent. I’m not talking about doing formal interviews or selecting staff; I mean really getting to know people. When I go out to visit a plant, I’ll sit down for the first half hour with the manager. We’ll have a discussion about the capability of his people, looking at who is performing well and who needs help. I’ll go to a meeting of the whole staff and listen to what they have to say. Then I’ll sit down after the meeting and talk about my impressions of the people and write a letter confirming the agreements made at the meeting. And I’ll assess people’s performance not just at our formal reviews but two or three times a year. When we were putting these processes into place at AlliedSignal, one guy—a pretty good guy—said to me at a meeting, “You know, I’ve got to go through this people ritual again this year.” I said, “That’s the dumbest comment I’ve ever heard, because you tell the world how little you know about your job. If you really feel that way, you’ve got to do something else, because if you’re not going to get good at this, you can’t be successful.” I didn’t say it in front of everybody, but I thought to myself, That just tells me maybe I’ve got the wrong guy.