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Execution:
the Discipline of Getting Things Done By
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan Larry Bossidy, former
chairman and CEO of both Honeywell international and Allied Signal, and CEO of
General Electric credit, and Ram Charan, advisor to CEO’s and former business
school professor have written a book that:
Readers familiar with
school systems will recognize many common behaviors of superintendents and
boards in the descriptions of the characteristics of companies that do not
execute: “In the past,
businesses got away with poor execution by pleading for patience. ‘The
business environment is tough right now,’ is one typical excuse; or ‘Our
strategy will take time to produce results.’” P.5. “The main requirement
[for execution] is that you as a leader have to be deeply and passionately
engaged in your organization and honest about its realities with others and
yourself.” P. 8 “Most companies don’t
face reality well. As we shall see,
that’s the basic reason they can’t execute.”
P. 22. “Leaders in an
execution culture design strategies that are more road maps than rigid paths
enshrined in fat planning books. That
way they can respond quickly.” “Only the leader can
set the tone of the dialogue in the organization.
Dialouge is the core of the culture and the bbasic unit of work.
How people talk to each other absolutely determines who well the
organization will function.” P.
25. “Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable.” P. 67. "When I took over at
AlliedSignal, for example I got two different pictures from our people and our
customers. While our people were
saying that we are delivering an order-fill rate of 98%, our customers thought
we were at 60%. The irony was,
instead of trying to address the customers’ complaints, we seemed to think we
had to show them that we were right and they were wrong."
P. 68 Chapter
3 Building
Block One: The Leader’s Seven
Essential Behaviors ·
Know your people and your
business. ·
Insist on realism. ·
Set clear goals and priorities. ·
Follow through. ·
Reward the doers. ·
Expand people’s capabilities. ·
Know yourself. Know
your people and your business The authors put a great
deal of focus on formal and informal systems to generate and capture information
about the competencies and performance of people. “[T]he most important thing
leaders do: selecting and evaluating
people.” And they insist the CEO
must be curious, questioning, probing throughout the organization, both to make
good decisions and to set a tone and pattern for the organization. Insist
on Realism This section is knowing
the facts about a business: market
share, ROI, costs of customer acquisition, customers intentions, customers’
customers’ intentions, competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and the
intentions of their customers, etc., etc., etc.
Although not limited by any means to numeric information, this section
does provides another example of the business world’s focus on metrics and a
sharp contrast to the numbers-phobic behavior of too many school systems. Set
clear goals and priorities "Leaders, to
execute, must focus on a very few clear priorities that everyone to grasp."
“[L]eaders who execute
… speak simply and directly. They
talk plainly and forthrightly about what's on their minds.
They know how to simplify things so that others can understand them, and
evaluate them, and act on them, so that what they say becomes common sense.”
P.70. Follow
through Who will do what and
when? How will success be measured,
by whom and when? Answer these questions,
and live by the answers, or all else is meaningless. Reward
the doers “If you want people to
use specific results, you reward them accordingly.
This fact seems so obvious that it shouldn't need saying.
Yet many corporations do such a poor job of linking rewards to
performance but there is little correlation at all.
They don't distinguish between those who achieve results and those who
don't, either in base pay or in bonuses and stock options."
P. 73. But, note the questions
concerning "pay-for-performance" in professional organizations.
I believe this performance reward systems from manufacturing
organizations must be evaluated with some care when applied to a professional
consulting and sales organization such as a school system. On the other hand, it is
important to set up measurement systems to focus on teacher engagement, the
quality of assignments and lessons, student effort levels, persistence, and
intrinsic satisfaction, as well as multiple performance measures for students
during the year such as district-wide tests.
For one thing, what gets measured gets done.
In addition, comprehensive data flowing through the organization and
publicly visible is both the best motivation and structure for performance
within the organization, and important to accountability to the public. It is also important to
provide some recognitions and rewards based on the things you value – quality
teaching that achieves student engagement and learning – and to make
absolutely certain NO recognitions or rewards (e.g., “Teacher of the Year”)
are political games or it’s-his-turn kind of things.
If a school has a teacher who is the best every year, then that teacher
is “Teacher of the Year” every year. She
may not get more money, but she should get respect.
And to anyone who says teaching cannot be measured that way:
all kinds of difficult-to-measure things get measured every day –
Customer satisfaction, the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, the skills of
surgeons, the effectiveness of psychiatric treatments – all kinds of things.
It’s not that good teaching and effective, energized schools can’t be
measured; the problem is that educators have been so measurement-phobic (and
have faced no competitive pressure to overcome it), that they have not developed
sufficient high-quality measurement tools and analytical techniques.
Much of this effort is being brought into schools from the outside.
That’s ok; just so it gets done and done right. Expand
people's capabilities through coaching By coaching, the authors
mean one-on-one instruction. But
they also seem to include formal professional development programs in this
category. They suggest that some
companies fail to make useful, meaningful decisions about who can participate in
such programs based on their perceived ability to benefit from them.
They suggest that real learning takes place in using the tools gained in
the classroom as part of small teams focused on company challenges.
Sound familiar? See this.
Or this. Or even this. Know
yourself Organizational leadership requires emotional fortitude, which is made up of four key qualities: authenticity, self-awareness, self-mastery, and humility. The authors did not provide any basis for their delineation of these areas. While I believe they are correct in to identify an emotional competence component to leadership, the work in Primal Leadership seems more useful in actually identifying the components and building a development plan. However, they do come to the same conclusion: learning new emotional behaviors is difficult, but doable, and once done is permanent and can be the basis for continued growth on an almost unlimited basis. Chapter
Four Building
Block Two: Creating the Framework for Cultural Change "To change a
business's culture, you need a set of processes -- social operating mechanisms
-- that will change the beliefs and behavior of people in ways that are directly
related to bottom-line results." P.
85. "You don't need a
lot of complex systems or employee surveys to use this framework.
You need to change people's behavior so that they produce results.
First you tell people clearly what results you're looking for.
Then you discuss how to get those results, as a key element of the
coaching process. Then you reward
people for producing the results. If
they come up short, you provide additional coaching, withdraw rewards, give them
other jobs, or let them go. When you
do these things, you create a culture of getting things done."
P. 86. I believe the disconnect
here between the business world and the world of education is in the total lack
of data-based ways of talking about results.
The first idea to come to mind in education is test scores, followed
closely by drop-out rates, etc. But,
I suspect, most teachers, principals, and administrators have no idea how to
connect their behaviors and the day-to-day operations of their schools to those
results. Further, schools are
woefully lacking in key performance indicators about such things as
student-engagement, persistence, satisfaction with the work they accomplished
(intrinsic reward), and the efficacy of the work assigned at producing valuable
skills and knowledge. Thus, one of
the first challenges in changing the culture of schools is to design and
implement adequate metrics. Operationalizing Culture
(p.89) The authors suggest that
values rarely need to be changed, but that beliefs must often be changed to
influence long-term behavior patterns. Generally,
an organization’s values, such as fundamental principles, integrity, respect,
etc., are appropriate. The authors
state that violation of these values, especially by high-level officials,
requires a public sanction. Anything
less will be interpreted as a lack of emotional fortitude. The authors also suggest
people change their beliefs only when new evidence shows them persuasively that
they are faulty. However, they go on
to use an example drawn from the EDS where top leadership went through a process
of identifying “Old EDS Beliefs” and then coming up with a set of “New EDS
Beliefs.” The “New EDS
Beliefs” then became an agenda for attitude change. Although there seems to
be some conflict between the statement that change in beliefs requires
persuasive evidence and the example from EDS, the lesson is that leadership can
identify a set of beliefs that will work better, then consciously reshape their
actions to conform with those beliefs and propagate them throughout the
organization both explicitly by communication and implicitly by their behaviors. Linking Rewards to
Performance (p. 92) “The
foundation of changing behavior is linking rewards to performance and making the
linkages transparent. A business’s
culture defines what gets appreciated and respected and, ultimately, reported.
It tells the people in the organization what’s valued and recognized,
and in the interest of trying to make their own careers more successful,
that’s where they will concentrate. If
a company rewards and promotes people for execution, its culture will change.” The authors are
exclusively talking about pay and bonuses as “the rewards.”
For many within the education world, and especially in education
associations that negotiate on behalf of teachers, this type of language would
raise huge red flags. The response
is always that principals and other administrators cannot be trusted to award
such bonuses impartially and appropriately.
Further, many will argue that each teacher does the same work and should
therefore receive the same pay. For
several reasons, not necessarily those put forth by the education associations,
I tend to agree that the concept of “pay-for-performance” does less to
improve education than its proponents hope, and would create many problems,
although not always based on the reasons put forth by those in opposition.
Also note that many individuals experienced in the management of
professionals caution against the use of such payment plans in professional
organizations. Whether those
cautions are appropriate to the education world depends on whether you view
management and leadership of the school system as more similar to the management
and leadership of a law firm, accounting firm, or consulting company, or more
like the management of the manufacturing organization. However, there are other
rewards and recognitions within a school system aside today.
These should all be carefully tied to an accountability structure focused
on excellence in execution, as measured by multiple tools for important areas of
performance. The
Social Software of Execution (p.96) Organizational Hardware:
Social Software:
Social Operating
Mechanisms Definition: structures of
dialogue that cut across organization lines.
They create new information flows and put people in contact with those
that they normally do not share information with.
These are the arenas where the beliefs and behaviors of the social
software are practiced consistently and relentlessly, and they spread the
leaders' beliefs, behaviors, and mode of dialogue.
Linked with measurement and reward systems, Social Operating Mechanisms
create the Social Operating System and make up the organization's culture. GE's Social Operating
System: Corporate Executive
Council: 2 1/2 day quarterly meeting of top 35 leaders to review all aspects of
businesses and external environment. CEO
uses to observe how his leaders think and work together, and to coach. Boca: annual meeting in Session C Meeting:
intense eight to 10 hour gathering with CEO and corporate HR head and business
leaders and top HR executives of each business unit. This is a review of the
unit's talent pool and organizational priorities.
It focuses on whether the organization has the right people in the right
jobs to execute its strategies, promotions, rewards, development, and
identifying those who cannot handle the job. S-1 Meetings: annual
three-year strategy meetings with each business unit.
Includes corporate initiatives and fit between strategy and people in
charge of executing it. S-2 Meetings: annual review of operations strategies for the coming 12 to 15 months, including resource allocation. April surveys of
employees for feedback. October meetings of 150 top corporate officers to review progress of initiatives, get operating plans rolling for the coming year, and participate in executive development courses. Chapter
5 p. 109 Larry Bossidy says that
when things were going well in a company he headed, he spent 20% of his time on
the people processes, when he was re-building, that went up to 30-40%.
During his first three years at Allied Signal, he personally interviewed
many of the 300 plus MBA’s hired because they were the source for future
leaders. Why are there mismatches
in people and the needs of the organization? ·
Leaders don’t know enough
about the people they hire. ·
Leaders pick people they are
comfortable with, rather than those with the best skills. ·
Leaders lack courage to
discriminate between strong and weak performers and to take necessary actions. Note that in school
systems, these obstacles to a true “focus on folks” are exacerbated by: ·
Widely held belief that
socio-economic status and “ability” are primary determinants of student
performance. ·
Corollary 1:
Teachers and teaching are not that important. ·
Corollary 2:
There should be no difference in the treatment of teachers based on
quality of teaching. ·
Corollary 3:
Principals are free to choose teachers on the basis of how well they will
fit in and how easy they will be to manage – no need to struggle with the
challenges of high-performance but high-maintenance employees. ·
Corollary 4:
Evaluation and incentive systems can be structured for the comfort of the
organization and not its performance, e.g., focusing on whether a teacher keeps
her class under control and parents out of the principal’s hair rather than on
whether he gets students to work at quality work and engages parents as partners
in promoting that effort. The authors state that
any failure to know their people (or for an organization to have systems that
support that knowledge), reflects a lack of commitment by leaders.
Seems fair to me. “To consistently
improve the leadership gene pool, every business needs a discipline that is
embedded in the people process, with candid dialogues about the matches between
people and jobs, and follow through that ensures that people take appropriate
actions.” P. 114 Note what Also not that, unless the
product of schools has been clearly and correctly defined, there is no way to
select do the people process correctly.
For a system that’s truly-held belief is that its product is high test
scores, or racially-integrated schools, or well-adjusted children, or admissions
into highly-selective colleges, or state championships, or anything besides
quality work, the definition people process is going to be out-of-whack. Another insight into the
reasons why school systems have had difficulty focusing on folks may be found in
this passage from p. 118: “This
immense personal commitment is time-consuming and fraught with emotional wear
and tear in giving feedback, conducting dialogues, and exposing your judgment to
others.” If the components of
effective teaching in elementary, middle and high schools have not been
identified, then there can be little valid feedback to teachers.
And if principals cannot, therefore, be held responsible for giving such
feed back, then the evaluations of those principals, and of everyone above them,
must be based on such things as attention to administrative detail, making life
easy for central office administrators, etc.
How to Get the Right
People in the Right Jobs:
“Nowhere is candid
dialogue more important than in the people process.
If people can't speak forthrightly when evaluating others, then the
evaluation is worthless – to the organization, and to the person who needs the
feedback.” Of course, in many
states, and particularly in Of course, lack of candor
isn’t limited to school systems: “Most
people we see, however, have never
received an honest appraisal.” P.
133 The authors also suggest than
managers who have not had sufficient guidance, practice and support don’t have
enough confidence in their objective judgments to be critical. How many teacher
evaluations are honest? How many
principals have the skills, experience and confidence to provide honest
evaluations? For that matter, who
knows what separates great teachers from average, and average from ineffective?
(Note, I didn’t ask who has an opinion.
Who really knows and can prove it?) How
many teachers are confident in their principal’s ability to accurately assess
teacher effectiveness? How many
principals receive an honest evaluation? How
many systems have adequate metrics to allow for an objective evaluation of a
principal? In fact, how many have
such metrics for the system as a whole? Larry Bossidy on his
actions at Honeywell: “When
I go to one of the businesses, I look at the evaluations of all the top leaders
there and their direct reports – maybe fifty or seventy-five of them.
I go through all the high-potential people who were previously moved
there because of their progress and performance.
I identify those who aren’t performing, and decide what to do about
them. I follow through with a
five-or six-page memo to them individually.
Then I go back six months later and review to see that those actions were
taken.” “If
that approach cascades down through your organization as it’s supposed to, it
will change your workforce.” P.
136 The authors go on to say
that resistance to such candid evaluations will occur until managers begin to
see them as ways to help individuals improve, or to move them out.
Then, as they work with a much more effective team, they become committed
to the time and effort required by the people process. Comment
from the perspective of a public school system:
I suspect that most
public school folks reading this – superintendents, other administrators,
principals, teachers, and union officials – will have two objections at this
point, although they might, depending on the circumstances, voice only one, or
neither. First objection:
“The effectiveness of a teacher matters little to a child’s learning
compared to the influence of poverty, home-life, parental education, and
societal expectations. So why put
this kind of time and effort into hiring and managing teachers?
Just get a certified body in front of the classroom and focus on things
that might make that teacher better, like smaller classes, a
different curriculum, newer text books, more training, etc.” Second objection:
“It doesn’t matter anyway; you can’t fire bad teachers, and you
can’t pay the good ones more.” I am not persuaded by
these objections. As to the first,
this view is slowly starting to fade as evidence such as that developed in Further, the suggestion
that ALL teachers could be made better if only (fill in the blank with some
curriculum, teaching methodology, training program, classroom design, etc.) were
implemented is unsupported by experience. None
of these touted solutions have worked in every case.
Success for All? No.
Saxon Math? No.
NCTM standards? I don’t
thinks so. Small class sizes?
Actually a net loss as the most effective teachers have had the
opportunity to help fewer children and more children have been put in the
classroom with an inexperienced or unqualified teacher.
These things may or may not help in some situations, depending on the
culture of the school, implementation process, “ownership” by teachers, etc.
But they cannot be put in place from above and effect significant,
sustained, and continuous across-the-board improvements in student achievement. Finally, yes, we can do
something about highly-ineffective teachers.
But we have to have appropriate metrics and effective leaders and
managers as principals. Principals
have to spend the time necessary to carefully and thoughtfully evaluate
teachers, then work with the under-performers to develop improvement plans, see
that they are followed, and, if results aren’t forthcoming, initiate and
follow-through on procedures to get that teacher out of the classroom.
And, systems must supply principals with administrative support and
resources to support that process. That
support should include both reducing other demands on principals (attending
meetings at the central office, for example) and putting supports in place for
the process (training in how to evaluate, mentoring through the process, legal
assistance should dismissal proceedings be required, etc.). Part
III: The Three Core Processes of
Execution Chapter
6 The
People Process: Making the Link with
Strategy and Operations p. 141 Robust people process:
The process must focus on
the capabilities of individuals for the tasks that will be necessary to execute
the strategic plan, not just on how well they are performing in their role
today. An individual who has been
outstanding in a role may not be well fitted for the demands on that role as
circumstances change. “Even the best people
process doesn’t always get the right people in the right jobs, and it can’t
make everybody into a good performer. Some
managers have been promoted beyond their capabilities and need to be put in
lesser jobs. Others just have to be
moved out. The final test of a
people process is how well it distinguishes between these two types, and how
well leaders handle the painful actions they have to take.”
P. 163-164 Ram Charan: “Get five people who
know the person together in a room. Get
them to open up, to share and argue their observations, and to reach a
conclusion. The diagnosis will come
from the convergence of their diverse views.
That’s the core of your robust people process.”
P. 160. Keys:
“The right people are
in the right jobs when information about individuals is collected constantly and
leaders know the people, how they work together, and whether they deliver
results – or fail to.” P. 177 Chapter
7 The
Strategy Process: Making the Link
with People and Operations “The substance of any
strategy is summed up by its building blocks:
the half-dozen or fewer key concepts and actions that define it.” “If the building blocks
are clearly defined, the essence of even the most complex strategy can be
expressed on one page.” P. 182. School systems have
frequently tried to adopt business approaches, but with little result.
I remember first hearing the term “SWOT” (strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities,
threats) from a high school principal
who had been in a “professional development” session where school leaders
had done a SWOT analysis. But, how
can this make sense when there is no competition?
Strategic planning is planning to achieve an advantage over competitors.
Of course, those who
support the charter school/voucher movement believe such organizations, when
combined with private schools and home schooling, can create a competitive
environment for public schools. Perhaps,
but it will be a long, slow process. My
focus is on how to improve public schools without relying on the chance that
such efforts may someday succeed, and that public schools will react to
competition in effective rather than ineffective ways. However, if school
personnel correctly identify what business they are in, strategic planning
begins to make more sense. Schools
are places where adults sell youngsters on doing hard, sustained work the full
benefit of which the youngsters may not appreciate until years later. In that context, schools
are in competition with recreational activities, socializing, and jobs far more
than with other schools. And
schools, or even teachers within a school, which set high standards for students
are in competition with those who are prepared to tell students they have
“achieved” without demanding real work and real learning. What are the “building
blocks” (key concepts) underlying most school system strategic plans?
Go out and look at the
strategic plans of most school systems – plenty are available on the web –
and I suspect you’ll conclude that most are based on these building blocks.
But, when you ask whether either experience with plans based on these
building blocks, or the best thinking of experts in the fields involved and the
experience of other industries, suggests that these building blocks are sound,
the answer is a resounding NO! You
cannot train folks into new ways of behavior, and certainly not with the type
and quality of “professional development” programs used by schools.
No curriculum or pedagogical approach is a sufficient condition for
increased student achievement. Tests
don’t teach. And it doesn’t matter how you shuffle school time if you are
not fundamentally improving the quality of attention, focus, effort, and
communication of teachers and students during the allotted time. So, what are some
building blocks that will support increased student achievement?
Here’s my half-dozen:
These building blocks can
stand up in to the strains of the real world.
They are “implementable” by school systems with current levels of
resources and personnel. With a
superintendent who probes, questions, challenges, and demand frank, honest
speech about “touchy” subjects, including people, central office personnel
can put together plans for deploying resources based on these building blocks
and teachers and principals can work with a structure built on these principles
to create fabulous, amazing schools where students will work harder and smarter
than they do today, feel better about that effort and their experience in
school, and learn way more and way better, both academically and about
themselves. Chapter
8: How to Conduct A Strategy Review The Jack Welch approach:
ban the fat books; get everybody thinking and talking about reality.
“The business unit strategy review is the prime Social Operating
Mechanism of the strategy process.” P.
208 Schools and school
systems in Questions to raise at a
strategy review: ·
How well versed is each business
unit team about the competition? (In
schools, this would mean the competition for a student’s time, attention, and
energy.) ·
How strong is the organizational
capability to execute the strategy? ·
Is the plan scattered or sharply
focused? Too ambitious? What
priorities to avoid fragmentation of effort.
(In schools, this could go to some coordination between teacher action
groups to make their efforts mutually supportive or part of a coherent approach
by the school.) ·
Are we choosing the right ideas? ·
Are the linkages with people and
operations clear? Chapter
9 The
Operations Process: Making the Link
with Strategy and People This chapter involves the
detailed action planning that takes the strategy, people, and resources of an
organization and mesh them together toward achieving goals.
It discusses how to set “stretch goals” that can energize and cause
creative re-thinking, but that are more than just numbers intended to make the
top leaders’ commitments. It looks
at contingency planning and quarterly operational reviews to insure that goals
are met. However, it is at this
level that the real difference between what has to drive improvement in schools
and what drives business becomes clear. As discussed before,
public school systems do not have the same competitive pressures as businesses.
And it is unlikely that they will have such pressures at any point in the
next few years. Further, even if
competitive pressure increases, absent major changes in the social operating
mechanisms of school systems, the response would most likely be to simply cede
market share and accept as “our mission” whatever students were not being
covered by the competitors. And
those students would still get “school” done the same way, with little
improvement in results from what they experience today.
Sad. So, what’s the
alternative? First, we have to
recognize that while competition is the motivating force for business,
commitment is what makes schools move. Folks
don’t choose to become teachers to make the most money their skills and
talents would allow, or to become powerful executives or acclaimed political
leaders. Of course, they wouldn’t
turn those things down, but that weren’t the key considerations in their
career choices. And no, for those of
you who are thinking, “They had no other options,” that’s not true either.
The folks who are teaching in our schools today are, for the most part, smart,
capable, energetic, and conscientious individuals who could have succeeded in
other professions. Bottom line, today’s
teachers chose teaching because of their commitment.
And it is that commitment, that passion, which must fuel improvement.
It must be nurtured, encouraged, and protected.
And the teachers who have it must be respected participants in the
improvement process. So, in the business
world, it may be that money and success, or at least survival, are the rewards
of hard, thoughtful, creative work. In
schools, the rewards are psychic, as are the punishments.
When teachers give up on really helping students, when they abandon the
dreams they had for making a difference, not only do students and schools lose
the best contributions those teachers might have been able to make, but the
teachers die a little also. So, build a system that
is focused around the commitment and engagement of teachers. Structure support
and rewards for careful, thoughtful, reflective, collaborative work to improve
teaching. Remember that students
have to work, and work hard, to learn and grow, and measure continuously how
well schools are getting students to engage in those efforts.
With these two things clearly in focus, a system can put the principles
of execution to effective use. |
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