Four elements of strong execution

2005 was the 10th year of Zhou Weikun's tenure as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IBM Greater China. The presidents of many multinational companies in China frequently change. In contrast, Zhou Weikun is considered an "evergreen tree". What is the secret of Zhou Weikun's "Evergreen"? implement!

Zhou Weikun believes that three points of strategy and seven points of execution. For individuals, execution is part of leadership, and for companies, execution is the key to success or failure.

The well-known management trainer Yu Shiwei, in his book "Winning in Execution", mentioned such an example: a large state-owned enterprise in the Northeast went bankrupt due to poor management, and was later acquired by a Japanese consortium. The employees in the factory are all looking forward to Japanese companies to bring some advanced management methods. Unexpectedly, the Japanese company only sent a few people. Except for the senior managers of key departments such as finance, management, and technology, which were replaced by those sent by the Japanese company, there was no change at all. The system has not changed. The personnel have not changed, and the machinery and equipment have not changed. The Japanese side has only one request: to unswervingly implement the previously formulated system and standards. As a result, the company turned losses into profits in less than a year.

Without execution, even the best strategies and decisions cannot be realized, so how can execution be improved? In a survey on executive power held by the CEConlines website (www.ceconline.com) from October 31st to November 28th, 2005, 1828 website users participated in the survey, of which 47.98% of the participants 23.14% think that the most effective factor to improve execution is good communication; 23.14% think it is meticulous and clear reward and punishment; 13.46% think it is firm determination; 13.07% think it is coordinating internal resources; 2.35% think it is collecting feedback information ( see image below).

Good communication

Good communication is the basis of execution, which is also the consensus of 47.98% of the survey participants.

Why Communication Why did you choose communication as the factor that most enhances execution? A representative opinion is: "To effectively improve executive power, under normal circumstances, first of all, we must communicate fully and achieve a more consistent agreement on the completion of goals and tasks. Otherwise, the best decisions above will be implemented by the middle and lower levels." 20% off ', it will be out of shape. Other factors in the questionnaire are not dispensable, these factors are often the methods and means in the 'implementation' process."

Once a planning manager said: if the implementation If you go in the wrong direction, there is only one consequence: you are not planning how to succeed, but how you will fail.

If there's anything that gives employees more clarity on where to execute, it's good communication. Passing decisions on to employees at all levels, helping them understand what needs to be done, and getting their buy-in is a guarantee of success.

A survey participant said: "Execution in enterprises is weak, and many of the results of orders or plans are different from those originally designed and out of shape."

The main reason for this is the lack of effective communicate. The user said: "In the process of plan formulation, if the executor does not participate, there is no good communication between superiors and subordinates, and the executor lacks a sense of identity with the plan formulated by the manager, then passive execution will result. Employees are not active, If you take the initiative to complete the plan, how can the effect be good?

"In the process of implementation, the role of communication is even more important. Suppose the executor encounters difficulties, and he cannot communicate with the supervisor through convenient and fast channels, so he has to solve the problem according to his own understanding and method. As the saying goes, 'a little miss, a thousand miles away'. The way the executive handles the problem may be very different from the supervisor's idea, and it is inevitable that the final execution will be out of shape. "

How to communicate and how to communicate effectively? Ram Charan, one of the authors of the book "Execution", once participated in a leadership meeting of a company that needed a cultural change. The core topic of the meeting was how to build a Create a new corporate culture to improve efficiency.

The discussion started off without a clue and didn't get off the ground until the CEO of the company asked the question, "If cultural change is the goal, what problem should we solve first? "Members who attended the meeting gave some vague answers: 'How to change? ", "improve it", etc.

To make the answer more concrete, the CEO took a new approach: He divided the team's leaders into two-person teams and asked them to describe the current cultural characteristics of the department and the future The characteristics of culture.

This time the answer came out quickly: increasing accountability is the most needed change in business right now. Then the CEO asks: "Where to start? "The answer is: 'We ourselves. "

The CEO asked another question: "What should we do after we have changed our own behavior?" The head of human resources said, "Communicate the new guidelines to the rest of the department." "

Finally, the members of the meeting develop a series of specific measures to implement the goals established by the meeting.

Ask one question after another until the plan is fully understood and accepted by the implementer. Before implementation, like Such communication should be carried out continuously, spread the leader's beliefs, behaviors and dialogue patterns to the entire organization, and make the behavioral norms and beliefs of the upper-level leaders become the objects of the lower-level leaders to emulate, and finally make the whole organization accept This code of conduct and belief.

Communication has another purpose: to allow employees in the organization to engage in active dialogue, openly communicate current realities, and express their true views. To achieve genuine communication, talk should not be too much Formal, to encourage people to ask questions and express their opinions freely. Many breakthrough ideas are inspired by informal communication.

Larry Bossidy, another author of "Execution", believes that , Employees have learned how to cooperate in informal communication. When encountering difficulties in implementation, they will also think of discussing how to solve the problem with everyone.

Clear rewards and punishments

The clear rewards and punishments are also guaranteed to be implemented. Important conditions, otherwise people will not have the motivation to make greater contributions to the company.

Why are rewards and punishments? 23.14% of the survey respondents support "clear rewards and punishments" as the most effective means to improve execution, second only to 23.14%. "Good communication" came in second.

They believed: "Strong determination is important, good communication is important, information is essential, and internal resources are coordinated. But which of them is the most important factor? neither! Without the clear distinction between rewards and punishments, the above factors have become dispensable factors, or even negative factors, because they are more likely to increase costs. Only clear rewards and punishments are the most basic and effective guarantees. Only on this basis, coupled with the contribution of other factors, can the execution be strengthened. "

The managers who participated in the survey assumed that people are lazy and must be restrained by the system. One user's point of view is: "Chinese employees are far from having a strong sense of work responsibility like employees in Western companies, that is, 'Professionalisation'. Therefore, at this stage, in order to improve the execution ability, it is still the most effective to reward and punish measures. Only when employees or staff realize that this must be done, and it must be you, our employees will do it seriously. "

A website user who is engaged in the baking industry said: "Division of labor in advance for the matters that need to be implemented, and formulating detailed and clear reward and punishment measures is the most effective for improving execution. Because of this, each person's work performance, that is, his execution strength, will directly lead to the increase or decrease of his personal interests. In fact, reward and punishment measures are a kind of incentive behavior. Of course, it is very important that the reward and punishment measures are detailed, clear and fair, just and reasonable. "

How to reward and punish It is not easy to establish a fair, fair and reasonable performance evaluation and reward and punishment system, but it is a very important thing.

Dick Brown took up the position of EDS in 1991. CEO, he was able to lead EDS out of the predicament, the main reason is that he successfully established an executive culture in EDS. And the success of the implementation of the culture is due to such a performance evaluation system: he puts all executives according to their own and colleagues. The relative performance of the rank is ranked, and the corresponding rewards are given according to the rank of each person.

When evaluating, he does not take the performance data as the only evaluation standard, but also looks at the specific behavior of the employees. He hopes that the team members will be in a certain aspect If you do better, some related behaviors will be set as the standard.

For example, Brown wants to emphasize the collaborative relationship in the enterprise, and he also sets the employee's level of collaboration as the evaluation standard. If a colleague develops a A new guest room, and later because the service of colleague B's department was more suitable for this customer, he introduced the customer to colleague B. When evaluating colleague A, this behavior of colleague A will win him more bonuses.

During the evaluation process, Brown will explain the reasons for low-rated employees, guide their work, and help them improve performance.