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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN num: 9781422121160
ISBN number: 142212116X
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: July 14, 2008
Publishing house: Harvard Business School Press
Sale Popularity Level: 2421
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
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Product Description:
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans.
It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough works on strategy-focused organizations, the authors describe a multistage system that enables you to gain measurable benefits from your carefully formulated business strategy. This book shows you how to:
Develop an effective strategy--with tools such as SWOT analysis, vision formulation, and strategic change agendasPlan execution of the strategy--through portfolios of strategic initiatives linked to strategy maps and Balanced ScorecardsPut your strategy into action--by integrating operational tools such as process dashboards, rolling forecasts, and activity-based costing Test and update your strategy--using carefully designed management meetings to review operational and strategic data
Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies from a broad array of industries, The Execution Premium presents a systematic and proven framework for achieving the financial results promised by your strategy.
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Rated by buyers 
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An interesting book. After many years, Kaplan and Norton have finally conceded that you can't do strategy in isolation from both its context or everything to which it applies. I think its called holism or systems thinking or whatever new buzz-word is currently in use to describe such things. The Balanced Scorecard journey has ended. The king is dead, long live the king. The BSC (and Strategy Maps) now reside as simple tools, amongst many, in a much bigger tool box - exactly where they belong. The art now becomes one of choosing the right tool in the right context.
The flaw in the the Execution Premium is the same flaw in all these types of books: attributing sucess to a questionable cause at best, a false cause at worst. In this case, Kaplan and Norton attributing sucess to those organsiations that follow their Execution Premium cycle. Wishful thinking at best I suspect, but a good marketing ploy nevetheless. The world is far too complex a place to make such simplistic judgments. I'm not even sure such judgements can be made in principle.
It is interesting to compare the Kaplan and Norton solution to that offered by Morgan, Levitt and Malek in their recent book "Executing your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It Done". Different structure, more of the same. Or perhaps, in comparing the two we can say: "two out of a million possible ways to skin a cat".
Seriously, there are a lot of useful and interesting tidbits about strategy and strategy implementation in Execution Premium. Kaplan and Norton should be applauded and congratulated for providing this alone.
I'm not so sure about the operational side of the house. Yes, there are lots of references to some interesting tools, but, it appears to me to be a hodge-podge with little coherence other than some companies have used such tools and tips successfully, and they just happen to fit into a nice neat business cycle, which just happens to match the Execution Premium cycle offered by Kaplan and Norton, which just happens to be the reason for their success. Sorry, I think that particular formula wore off long ago.
Where to from here? I think we need some books which address why, rather than how. The game of sucess by imitation is coming to a close (if one concedes that it was ever open). It is coming to a close because organisations are complex beasts which adapt in their own way to already complex environments. We need less books about how organisations succeed and more books on why they succeed, or fail. Such books books are significantly more difficult to write.
Notably, however, "why" books are generally written from a foundation of "how" books. Kaplan and Norton should be congratulated for providing such a solid foundation. I will certainly use their latest book as a reference source of good ideas; but, in terms of where to from here: I await some brilliant author who offers more than just the art of imitation.
Good Luck.
Rated by buyers -
I strongly recommend this book for any executive with ambitions to both rise and to help grow a sustainable and increasingly profitable (or effective) organization, i.e. this applies to non-profits and government and academia as much as to commercial enterprises.
The book MUST be read in partnership with The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks, both emphasize strategy and business processes, and they are each unique in how they approach the urgency of getting an executive grip on both strategy and business processes or the blood and guts of operations.
Where I am increasingly disappointed (only one star worth) with the business literature is with its relative isolation from all the other literatures. Business is one of eight "intelligence tribes" (learn more at Earth Intelligence Network and OSS.Net,): the others are government at all levels, Military and National Guard or Gendarme, Law Enforcement, Academia, Media including bloggers and new media, Non-Profits, and Civil Society including lasbor unions and religions.
Where the Innovation book adds to this book by Kaplan and Norton is in its focus of co-creating value with all indiviudals--cutomsters, suppliers, employees, regulators. Both, however, lack the sense that can be found in, for example:
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Knowledge Executive
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
I also find both completely lacking in their appreciation for the purple to gold, cradle to cradle sustainable design ENVIRONMENT of business, as well as the toxic immoral environment that most businesses accept rather than challenge. See for instance:
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Finally, while strategy as well as information and intelligence (one in inputs, the other outputs) are buzz words in the business world, this book does well at demanding an Office of Strategy but does not reflect the best knowledge of strategic thinking such as represented by Colin Gray in Modern Strategy and other recent publications; and neither really appreciates external unstructured ANALOG or human information, although the innovation book tries with a second hand appreciation of humans.
A huge paradigm shift is coming, and the value of morality as a basis for trust (Nobel Prize awarded for the guy that gamed that trust lowers the cost of doing business) is upon us. We are now ready to create the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth that Buckminster Fuller envisioned. See Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace for a sense of what 55 others are saying on this vital FOUNDATION for business enterprise.
Rated by buyers -
The Execution Premium is the crowning book of Kaplan and Norton's series addressing the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy maps. This book is manual for strategists as it brings together all of the current best thinking related to how an organization establishes its strategy, uses strategy maps and leverages balanced scorecards. K & N continue to their tradition of providing good case study support and graphical examples to illustrate their point. K & N also continue their tradition of thinking that strategy coupled with measurement constitutes execution.
This is a must read book for strategists, consultants and aspiring MBAs as it is a compendium of all the current approaches to strategy setting. This book's focus on integrative thinking is its greatest strength. K & N bring together Porter, Reichheld, their own work and other techniques such as PESTEL, TDABC and forceasting which are all relevant to one degree or another. If you only had money in your budget for one business book - I would recommend this one just for its sheer comprehensive coverage.
In the very first paragraph K&N make an astute observation when they say that "operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential ... but they work in very different ways." That is true. Rather than providing a bridge between these two ways the rest of the chapter and the rest of the book focuses on the strategy processes. I was hoping for an operationally focused bridge between the two as that is how you move from strategy to results - but it was not there.
Do not let the title fool you, this book is about the execution of the strategy setting process. It is not about operational execution or even execution of the strategy (ala Bossidy and Charan's best seller EXECUTION). It not about how you realize an execution premium - that premium is assumed if you execute the balanced scorecard and strategy maps.
Given the title I was expecting to understand the financial, market value and performance `premium' one would get from following this approach. While some of that is in the book, its treatment seems to be more fortunate coincidence rather than an executed connection between the strategy and operations. That does not mean that this is a poor book, not at all, but if you are reading this to understand how to get an execution premium from delivering strategic goals in your operations, this is not the book.
Strengths - analytical and financial view of the company
* Comprehensive in covering all of the major tools and techniques currently used in formulating strategy. This is the strength of the very first few chapters that focus on PETEL analysis and other techniques
* Consistent in their support and explanation of their key concepts, such as the balanced scorecard and strategy maps. This builds on the other K&N books.
* Process focused in laying out a strategy formulation process. The Roadmap for strategy processes is accurate and clear. The discusion of management meetings and reviews focused on the strategy (Chpt 7 and 8) is a plus.
* Information and Analytics a practical guide to using operational data in the strategy process. This is the primary focus of the plan operations step. The discusion and detailed examples are strength.
* Financial focus in providing examples of the financial approaches to strategy setting. This is particularly in the plan operations and the use of Time Driven Activity Based Costing Model.
Challenges - limited connection between the strategy and the way you manage and change operations to achieve the strategy.
* Avoids any real discusion of operational management, it is assumed that operational managers who have the right metrics will make the right decisions across the enterprise to achieve the goals.
* Assumes that enterprise strategic goals are mathematically decomposable. By that I mean that I can take a goal, divide it into smaller parts that add up to the whole goal and assume that if I achieve the parts I will achieve the goal. This is a vertical top down strategy view of the company, and ignores the horizontal, bottom up, process reality that creates results.
* Asserts the alignment fallacy by concentrating on aligning on the financial ends with no consideration of the means to achieve those ends across the enterprise.
* Pays limited attention to the core "Learning and Growth Disciplines" like HR and IT and by their omission. In fact at the end the book asserts "The company assumes that achieving the strategic objectives for human, information and organizational capital will drive improvement in critical strategic processes." P. 252 Anyone who has seen the impact of a less than successful HR, IT, or Re-organization knows that this is not an assumption that can be made with certainty, ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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Strategy an operation need a common space. This spaces are critically for performance management today. This book of Kaplan & Norton focused now on these things and they explain many ways and how linkage operation and results, both time, and successfully.
very recommendable and outstanding!
Rated by buyers -
Senior executives love to plan strategies. They believe this puts them in the exalted company of Napoleon, Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. Indeed, for CEOs and their corporate colleagues, developing strategy is the heart of executive leadership. Unfortunately, most companies end up with strategies that are not linked to their actual operations. The result? Strategy that is not strategic, since companies are unable to implement it. Strategy experts Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton created the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps and have now developed a versatile, six-stage program your corporation can use to mesh its strategy with its operations. Their approach already works for numerous top-flight organizations. getAbstract applauds this outstanding book. It is an exceptionally worthwhile read, especially given its valuable case studies. One caveat: Readers who are not grounded in sophisticated, strategic systems, such as Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecard, will be in over their heads starting on page one.
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