Ruthless Execution: How Business Leaders Manage Through Turbulent Times, Second Edition

Book description

Today's business leaders are confronted with a variety of obstacles that threaten their very survival. To survive and thrive, the modern manager must know how to lead through adversity while preparing their companies for a new era of success. In Ruthless Execution, Amir Hartman and Craig LeGrande identify the primary approaches and techniques that keep companies from falling prey to the myriad of corporate, economic, and market challenges faced by organizations around the world. In the second edition of this book, managers and executives will learn when and how to recalibrate the balance between performance and growth; how to define a coherent, tightly-drawn business philosophy that maps to specific actions; new ways to promote accountability and business alignment; and how to use performance metrics without burying people in meaningless trivia. The authors give practical advice on how to develop stronger critical capabilities for understanding and managing complexity. This fully updated edition offers new techniques for thriving despite adversity and features new examples and cases illustrating the challenges faced by the modern global organization.

Table of contents

  1. About This eBook
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Foreword
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. About the Authors
  8. Part I: Managing Through Tough Times
    1. 1. Introduction to Ruthless Execution
      1. Hitting a Performance Wall
      2. Ruthless Execution II
        1. Leadership
        2. Critical Capabilities
        3. Governance
  9. Part II: Leadership
    1. 2. Strategic Recalibration and the Business Philosophy
      1. The Ruthless Execution Checklist
      2. Strategic Recalibration
      3. Revitalizing the Core
      4. Reading the Environment
      5. Guidelines for Strategic Recalibration
        1. Strategic Recalibration—Where to Start?
        2. The Business Philosophy—Communicating the Journey
        3. Communicating Consistently
      6. Strategy to Execution
    2. 3. Portfolio Management Discipline
      1. Portfolio Management Discipline
      2. Using the Performance Portfolio Framework
      3. The Art and Science of Portfolio Management
      4. Maximizing Return on Strategy
    3. 4. Cardinal Health Thrives on Culture of Reinvention
      1. Taming Turbulence
      2. Constant Transformation
      3. Shock Absorption
      4. Peripheral Vision
      5. Endnotes
  10. Part III: Critical Capabilities
    1. 5. Recalibrating to Compete in Today’s Market
      1. Ruthless Execution Checklist
      2. Capabilities Are Not Competencies
      3. Cloudification of Business
      4. Customer Success Management
      5. Endnotes
    2. 6. Managing Customer Success: The Last Mile of Customer Loyalty
      1. Ruthless Execution Checklist
      2. Power Shift
      3. Why Loyalty Matters
      4. Moving Beyond Loyalty to Customer Success
      5. Harvesting Value—The Last Mile of Customer Loyalty
      6. Endnotes
    3. 7. The Internet’s Third Wave: The Cloudification of Business
      1. Why Now?
      2. Innovation Challenges
        1. Smart Products and Services
        2. Structured and Unstructured Data Management
        3. Asset Management
        4. Big Data Analytics
        5. Designing Compelling User Experiences
        6. Security and Governance
        7. Business Model Transformation
      3. Getting Ready for Cloudification
      4. Endnotes
    4. 8. Oracle’s Journey to Customer Centricity
      1. Challenges
      2. The Transformation
      3. From Transactions to Partnerships
    5. 9. Rockwell Embraces the Industrial Ethernet
      1. Smart Bet
      2. Smart Devices
      3. Rich Possibilities
      4. Mobilizing for the Future
  11. Part IV: Governance
    1. 10. Tough Rules for Tough Times
      1. Ruthless Execution Checklist
      2. New Rules for the Board
      3. Boards and Customer Success
      4. Boards’ Clouded View
    2. 11. Achieving Operational Excellence
      1. Accountability
      2. Performance Management System
        1. Not All Measures Are Created Equal
      3. Discipline
        1. The Discipline of Capital Investment
        2. Striving for Consistency
    3. 12. The Discipline of Change: Banfield Pet Hospital
      1. Getting Buy-In
      2. Breaking Barriers
  12. Part V: What It All Means
    1. 13. Final Thoughts
      1. Ruthless Execution Index (Spreadsheet)
  13. Index

Product information

  • Title: Ruthless Execution: How Business Leaders Manage Through Turbulent Times, Second Edition
  • Author(s): Amir Hartman, Craig LeGrande
  • Release date: September 2014
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 9780133410785