Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Why purpose drives execution

December 4, 2007

With the availability of our new book, Executing Your Strategy, strategic execution will take on a new era in getting the strategic agenda of the organization accomplished. Piecemeal approaches to organizational development, organizational change and strategic planning have delivered less than optimum results for enterprises in general. So whats the problem?

I was reading Fortune magazine two days ago and turned to the cover article that reads "Confessions of a CEO" which is about Dominic Orr, CEO of Aruba Networks. The article chronicles Dominic's journey through life as a corporate whiz in HP and in several other endeavors. In the article it becomes apparent that Dominic payed a huge price for his success on the home front. A really bad relationship with his son and a divorce not withstanding, Dominic says"I wanted to make peace with all the people I had hurt". So what does that have to do with strategic execution? Everything, actually. You see, what most people do not see is that what got Dominic into the shape of sitting on a psychiatrists couch and procaiming that his goal was to die a complete man in the wake of having made huge amounts of cash but having trashed his relationships that counted most is all about strategic execution. Dominic executed his plans for money, power and influence but had a fundamental misalignment with a key element in the system. Purpose. He forgot Purpose. He forgot that meaning comes from other things than money. He neglected the idea in the Toyota way handbook that says the enterprise must be dedicated to more than just making money to be sustainable and generate real performance.
Purpose guides decisions at the portfolio level of life and enterprise execution. This may be radical but becomes critical as we move into the next phase of organizational development fundamentally run by the human network, not the business machine.

That is one of the foundational concepts contained in our book called "Executing Your Strategy"

Read more about it at executingyourstrategy.com or look up Executing Your Strategy on Amazon.com

No comments: