Improving Your Business Results

Posted by Jim Connolly on 14 December, 2009  Email This Post -  Print This Post

In the best-selling book, “Execution” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution is defined as, “a discipline of questioning, analysis and follow-through.”  The authors go on to explain that Execution is a discipline for meshing strategy with reality, aligning people with goals and achieving the results promised.

Improve Your Business Results

What can you do today to improve your ”discipline of questioning, analysis and follow-through?”

In a succinct and effective way, the book suggests that the key is in aligning three processes; the people process, the strategy process and the operations process. 

Now, traditional thinking would suggest setting the strategy and then aligning the people and operations capability to the chosen strategy.  In essence, the thought is to make sure you have the people and operations capability to carry out the chosen strategy. 

However, this thinking is wrong because there is often no solid link between these three critical processes.  So, these processes operate somewhat independently of one another and it feels like you are running in Jell-O.  For example, if a strategy is chosen that can’t be supported by the current people and/or operations processes, the plan is doomed and results fall short.

Simple But Not Easy 

The key is that each of these three processes has to be aligned with the other two.  This is much different than the traditional method outlined above.  When you align each process with the other two, every area is on the same page with every other area.  When that occurs, magic happens.

This process is simple, but the work is not necessarily easy.  However, when you finally achieve alignment between these three processes, every area of your entire organization will be working in sync to improve business performance and, ultimately, business results.

For more insights into how to improve business performance and business results, check out our other blog categories here. 

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To your success!