Execution: The Great Unaddressed Issue In Business

Ram Charan is one of the leading management consultants in the world. One of his books, co-authored with Larry Bossidy, is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. More than one million copies have been sold and it is one of the best-selling business books of all time.

Stephen Bernhut, the editor of Ivey Business Journal Online, interviewed Ram Charan in Toronto, where he recently spoke at the annual meeting of the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario.

Some key excerpts from the interview (ED NOTE: italics are mine):

IBJ: It’s now more than five years since you wrote what is considered to be “the” book on execution. Is it still as important as it was when you wrote the book?

RC: Execution is the great unaddressed issue in business today. Too many leaders today still place too great an emphasis on high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. The fact is that the real difference between a company and its competitor is the ability to execute.

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IBJ: In your book on execution, you say that many people equate execution with tactics. You also say that’s wrong. Why?

RC: Execution is a discipline and a system, it’s not only tactics. It must be built in to a company’s culture, strategy and goals. It’s a leader’s most important job. But many leaders today don’t do that. They spend time learning and deploying the latest management techniques. Execution is a discipline of its own, and today it is the critical discipline for business success.

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Read the entire interview at Ivey Business Journal here.