Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780981641102
ISBN: 0981641105
Label: Six Disciplines Publishing
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Six Disciplines Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2008-07-01
Publisher: Six Disciplines Publishing
Studio: Six Disciplines Publishing

With all of the pressures successful business leaders have today, none is more urgent or challenging than learning the ability to execute strategy.

While larger businesses have the luxury of budgets and resources to meet this challenge, it's the small and midsized businesses that now have a tremendous opportunity to level the playing field, leapfrog the expensive, outdated approaches of the past, and attack the challenge of execution in a revolutionary way. The key insights are:

• Excellence is the enduring pursuit of balanced strategy and execution
• Planning and executing, while at the same time dealing with the inevitable surprises, is the biggest challenge in business
• Overcoming this challenge is what we mean by solving the one problem that makes all others easier
• Failing to solve the problem destines your organization to a reactive, fire-fighting future.

Based on breakthrough research, field testing and proven best-practices, the thought-leading vision described by Gary Harpst in Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution sets a new course for how small and midsized businesses can finally confront the never-ending challenge of executing strategy.

As a follow-up to the success of Six Disciplines for Excellence, Harpst's new book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution, details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, clarifies how it could only have happened now, and explains why such a program will soon become a mainstream requirement for your business.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Book for a Struggling Business Environment
Comment: With our struggling economy, the crisis with rising prices in energy and the continual, increasing rise in food prices, a large percentage of American businesses are struggling. The timing of this book could not have been better.

This book details a strategy execution program for your organization. The guides in this book with will assist any manager at any level with moving into a proactive stance rather than reactive. Surprises - some small, some business killers - are around every turn. This book deals with these issues head on in an open and honest way.

The field testing that was performed along with the best practices of know organizations takes a lot of pressure off for those who wish to pursue the advice in this wonderful new book. I can assure you that you will not have buyer's remorse. Buy copies for all of your managers and leaders. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author ofWingtips with Spurs

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Persistence to Make the Hard Choices
Comment: In my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit, I urge leaders and managers to "Avoid Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome." That's why this book gets my high-five rating. It fits with my Management Buckets system--and it's all about execution. As Peter Drucker said, "Vision without execution is delusion." Plus, the author's recommended books (in the resource section) give you a synergistic context. The book won't take you off-course. It's a complementary tool to help you walk the next steps.

"The first premise of this book is that what most business leaders think is their greatest challenge really isn't," says Harpst, who implemented more than 60,000 business management systems. "In most of my 20-year tenure as CEO of Solomon Software, I was in react mode, moving from one crisis to the next." So he makes the analysis simple with four quadrants focused on strong or weak strategy, coupled with strong or weak execution. The four quadrants: 1) growth wave, 2) fire-fighting, 3) profit wave, and 4) balanced and predictable.

It's all about getting to his quadrant of excellence: balanced and predictable. "This sounds easy," he writes, "but most organizations don't have the framework, the will, or the persistence to make the hard choices it requires." He adds, "Sustainable excellence isn't possible unless an organization learns to systemically increase its capability to execute, and to do so faster than the rate at which its challenges are growing. It's ironic that the better an organization executes today, the bigger its challenges will be tomorrow." (Been there, done that, right?)

I appreciate his comment that excellence is "the enduring pursuit of balanced strategy and execution." Harpst also reminds us that excellence is the "journey that never ends." I agree.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Planning and Execution
Comment: While the ultimate message put forth in this book is about executing your plans and how to go about that, it is very much based on what needs to be done first - and that is Planning, Goal-Setting. Without this foundation in place first, any actions in business will be haphazard, directionless and misguided.

Six Principles Execution Revolution is an excellent business source that offers some unique insights into how to put your business goals into action. Having a plan is one thing. Being able to make it happen is something else altogether. This book helps you do that.

How To Keep Your Man: And Keep Him For Good

Real Life Dramas - Volume One

Darren G. Burton

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Stories, But Be Careful
Comment: Harpst's great book should be tempered with book's like How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business and The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers. If we are careful to qualify how much can really be gathered even from a single person's "sample", even it it is the numerous experiences of someone like Gary Harpst, then we can learn a lot from his anecdotal evidence.

I would add methods Hubbard's How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business to address some issue that Harpst only alludes to - like how to tell what adds the most shareholder value or knowing if activities are leading toward successful execution. But, for what it is, it is probably the best manager's perspective on focusing on what matters for successful delivery.

Harpst's prose sometimes reminds me of half-time pep-talk springled with a lot of touchy-feely manager-speak. But there is no doubt his examples of "getting things done" are engaging. I might also suggest reading this alongside Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets just for a healthy dose of skepticism about management observations.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Execution Involves Every Person, Every Day
Comment: In a format that's easy to read and follow, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution captivated me from beginning to end. The author, Gary Harpst, uses practical experiences and field research (not ivory-tower academic theory) to craft a complete program for strategy execution. This book is not just for senior leaders - it's for everyone, as everyone is responsible for executing plan, every day. Harpst eloquently confirmed what I've thought all along: Excellence is a journey that never ends. It's an enduring pursuit that requires an enduring approach. Strategy execution involves every person, every day. Execution Revolution reveals a new way to attack the biggest challenge in business (execution), and Harpst offers us a new way to approach this ongoing challenge."

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