StartupGarden: June 2002 Archives

Execution: A Systems Approach to Effectiveness

There’s been a lot of recent publicity promoting Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, a fine new book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Several reviewers have noted that the book’s focus on effectiveness implicitly critiques the "big idea" mania of dot-com cloud coo-coo-land. I agree. But there’s more: this book nicely reminds all executives, in companies big or small, that the prime function of the leader is to design and operate systems that keep the business moving forward, realizing goals in a deliberate and planned manner. The key to this approach lies in integrating the various tactics. Bossidy and Charan show how effective executives tie together the functions of hiring the right people, creating the right strategy, and then involving oneself sufficiently in the details of the company to ensure that the operating processes (how people carry out strategy) work properly.

The book’s holistic approach to effective management calls to mind the "systems approach" at the core of Peter Senge’s classic business book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. One key to learning organizations, Senge argues, lies in understanding how cause and effect relate to one another in the larger system. Moreover, Bossidy and Charan’s emphasis that chief executives train a cold eye on reality calls to mind Joan Magretta’s What Management Is. On an individual level, Execution’s ideas nicely complement the ideas of efficiency guru David Allen in his well-received book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Here Allen shows how entrepreneurs and leaders can boost their efficiency through a simple but powerful system of making the right choices about which actions to take. And if I were to recommend one more great text in this genre, look no further than Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive, which pithily foreshadows the work of such current stars as Stephen Covey and others. There’s little about management today that Drucker hasn’t influenced in one form or another, and this little gem of a book shows why.

Posted by tom at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

Two more fun business books

Two more business beach books. The first, The New New Economy, proves that business humor is not necessarily an oxymoron. Written by Tim McEachern and Chris O’Brien, two guys with technical backgrounds, this book will tickle your funny bone by spoofing the excesses of the dot-com era. And yet, while I could make the case that this book delights because it satirizes the greedy, misguided, boneheaded mindset of so much New Economy thinking, there’s a far simpler reason to buy. The book is funny. It advocates the use of a time machine to formulate strategy. It makes up quotes by folks like Larry Ellison and Gordon Moore. And it preaches the gospel of Total Quality Avoidance.

Another fun read, with a few degrees more verisimilitude, comes in 21 Dog Years: Doing Time@Amazon.com by former employee Mike Daisey. This snarky book skewers the dark yuppie underbelly of Amazon.com during its get big fast phase, a time in which slackers staffed the electronic sweatshop of customer service and know-nothings in Business Development passed judgement on business plans comprised of nothing more than a great PowerPoint presentation. How does Daisey know? He was there. Starting as a temp, the mischievous Daisey works his up to "bizdev," where he throws darts at the flaky dot-com plans seeking Amazon validation. Daisey’s book succeeds because it casts his reflective, bemused eye on an MBA-fueled culture that defied the Gen X values of most of its lower and mid-level employees. Daisey is not afraid to rib Amazon by reporting on his own willingness to increase his call response time by hanging up on calls, or his strange need to send personal emails to Jeff Bezos (none of which were answered.) Today Daisey has left Amazon and is pursuing his real dream of being a playwright: his one-man show of the same title is playing to critical praise off-Broadway.

Posted by tom at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)