Art of Execution-Doing More, Faster, With Fewer Resources

by John Steidl, Client Solutions

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a 2,000-year-old gem on military strategy, is periodically dusted off by management consultants trying to apply its pearls of wisdom to the modern battlefield of commercial competition. Can 21st century CEOs and managers really learn something from this classic?

Today’s sound bites certainly do have the ring of battle about them, with frequent references to corporate survival, global competitiveness, and victory in the high-tech war. Aspiring generals of industry could do worse than read Sun Tzu, whose wisdom is both timeless and authentic. As they ransack Master Sun’s work insearch of quick and easy solutions, many may overlook the real gems within The Art of War. It iseasy to grasp that, like ancient Chinese warfare, twentieth century business requires a sense of urgency.

War is by nature an urgent matter; but Sun Tzu repeatedly emphasizes the urgency of strategizing, of knowing what is and is not important. Outright battle, he writes, is a last resort; far better to achieve victory without expending people and equipment. Furthermore, the Master assures us, victory is not necessarily won by the largest force.

Words for today’s businesses to live by. In the ongoing global shakeout, victory requires clear objectives, streamlined and flexible processes, and optimized use of on-hand resources. Victory requires not the largest force, but the most effective one, applied at the critical point, within a narrow window of opportunity. In business, as in battle, the nimble are consistently able to defeat the large and unwieldy.

But this is easier said than done, as most of us know from painful experience. What principles can we apply to take our game to the next level in the nimble, efficient, and decisive application of resources? As Sun Tzu recommends, the first necessity is to decide what is really important. Unfortunately, there are always competing priorities. Worse yet, the functional silos in many organizations do not necessarily agree on the relative ranking of those priorities. Since the highest leverage opportunities tend to require close collaboration between functions, an effective process to bring everyone into alignment on priorities should be the top priority for every senior executive. You would be surprised how many companies do not have this critical foundation in place.

The next step is to get beyond firefighting. Many organizations have so many resources dealing with emergencies, that there are few left to work on anything else. This is analogous to the ineffective general who attempts to defend everything. In trying to defend everything, he ultimately defends nothing and guarantees his own defeat. In some organizations, the master firefighters are the most valued assets—a crazy state of affairs if you think about it, since putting firefighters on pedestals merely ensures the perpetuation of a firefighting culture. In order to work on root-cause problems, you will need some of the resources that are now putting out fires. This is not something that is going to happen over night. Many of those fires are things that affect customers, so you can not just drop them.

What is needed is a proactive program to move steadily from a firefighting culture to a root-cause performance improvement culture. It is not easy, but if you can not make this journey, your business will be easy prey for a competitor that can.

Starts Control and Management Process

Once you have begun to free up people to support long-term improvement initiatives, how do you get them focused on what is really important? Assuming you have already followed our suggestions for getting alignment around the top priorities, there are two other responsibilities for leadership.

First is to “discipline your starts.” Working on the right number of things is as important as working on the right things. Too many initiatives will swamp any organization. So how do you know the right number? In our experience, the best approach is to fully load the top priority project, and the next, and the next. At some point you will not have all the resources you need for the next project on the list. Put it in backlog. Trying to drive a project that is missing key resources is generally futile and a waste of effort better spent elsewhere. The approach takes discipline, because no one likes to say “No” when the boss asks, “Can you handle just one more thing?” Thus it is up to management to create a process that ensures effective starts control with all required resources. This applies in every area from IT projects to new product development to operational improvement initiatives. As Sun Tzu says, all arms are required to win a battle. If the infantry fights without cavalry and artillery, because they are busy elsewhere, it will be defeated.

Second is to focus your resources. We have several tactics here:

  1. Always remember that deciding what you are not going to work on is as important as deciding what you are going to work on. Backlogged projects are always important to someone, who will try to move their important projects forward by recruiting stealth resources. Management has to set a hard rule and stick to it. Backlog means backlog. The initiative does not get worked on until it is activated.
  2. There are many types of critical resources that can be involved in day-to-day sustaining activity as well as longer-term initiatives. Examples include a wide variety of IT and engineering professionals. But this is the kiss of death. Day-to-day sustaining always wins out and can make it very difficult to make progress on the bigger projects. The solution, in all but very small organizations, is to split the responsibility between whole bodies. People working on sustaining activity should not generally be assigned to critical projects, and vice versa.
  3. Limit the number of projects any individual is working on. Involvement in too many at once can leave someone constantly in a position of being pulled in multiple directions. This is always a tough call, but there are techniques that can help determine when someone is overloaded.
  4. Create a management process to escalate problems quickly. If you are not getting the time you expect from a committed resource, this needs immediate attention. It is important to find out what the conflict is and resolve it.

Following these basic principles will help you keep people focused on the projects to which they have been assigned.

Superior Execution

Now that you have decided what is most important, have aligned the functions, and assigned resources to the task, you have only won half the battle. There are some other rules of world-class execution that you need to understand in order to successfully implement your plan:

  1. As we said before, combined arms (infantry, cavalry and artillery) are always more effective than a single unsupported arm. In business terms, the arms are functions. A single function in isolation cannot deliver value to the customer; functions create value through their integration in key business processes. As a result, significant performance improvements in your business require the active involvement of all functions that touch the process, collaborating in a cross-functional team environment, under the direction of a process owner.
  2. Goal clarity. Here is one where we have to disagree with the Master. Sun Tzu would say that it is not necessary for the troops to know the general’s objectives. But in business, everyone needs to understand the goal. In practice, there are multiple goals that sometimes involve trade-offs, and people need to understand both the goals and the trade-offs in order to make good business decisions. This applies to everyone, because everyone is making daily decisions that affect the performance of the business.
  3. An army (at least prior to the 20th century) marches most effectively to a measured cadence, hence the critical role of the drummer. In performance improvement, a similar cadence is required. Project teams should meet on a regular basis, with a standard meeting agenda and process, and higher-level management teams should also review projects on regular basis. Without this “drumbeat” cadence, key initiatives will move too slowly or even stall.
  4. Accountability is critical to the success of any military operation, and equally important for driving an aggressive program of performance improvement. Some organizations have a solid culture of accountability, but many do not. The route to a culture of accountability starts with an effective set of management processes to drive accountability. If you put these in place and use them, the culture will follow.
  5. Metrics are one key means to ensure accountability and are most easily leveraged through a drumbeat review process similar to the one described above. However, some of the most important attributes of an effective measurement system are not widely understood.

a.      Measure your processes, not just your functions.

b.      Balance historical metrics with forward-looking ones.

c.      Balance results metrics with drivers.

d.      Ensure your metrics are hierarchically linked.

A general who followed Sun Tzu’s advice could certainly expect to be victorious in battle. What spoils of victory can you expect to reap by applying these principles on the battlefield of commercial competition?

Having the fastest time to market is the Holy Grail in industries with short product life cycles, but it can mean a significant improvement in profitability for products with longer life cycles as well. The shortest lead time is another Grail in many industries, allowing the option of increasing either volumes or prices (and sometimes both). Finally, increased asset velocity carries lower risks, and frees cash to reinvest in the business, providing a turbo boost to your performance initiatives.

To achieve all of these requires a high-performing business, with a high degree of agility and flexibility. Putting a modern twist on some 2,000-year-old principles of military strategy will enable you to accomplish more, faster, with fewer resources, and take your organization’s performance to the next level.

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