British explorer-madman Jason Lewis pedaled up the Thames and across the Meridian Line at Greenwich on Saturday, thus completing a 13-year, 46,000 mile circumnavigation of the globe using only his own power—bicycle, 26-foot pedal boat, kayak, and inline skates.

At a Saturday evening party on the Farm, leaves at VT peak, I gave a friend fighting a severe illness one of my newly acquired Appalachian State T-shirts. I told him I called it my FTO T-shirt. (F^&* The Odds.)

Long shots are long shots—but they do come in. To my mind, the essence of life is trying stuff you "have no right to try." Consider this Wilde-ism (Oscar): "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Amen!
Happy Columbus Day!
(Canadian pals: Happy Thanksgiving.)

Markets. (Lots a folks tryin' lots of stuff.)
Decentralization. (Lots of folks tryin' lots of stuff.)
Freedom. (Detroit 1900, Silicon Valley 2000, America 1783-???, new China 1979-???, etc = Lots of folks tryin' lots of stuff.)

Hence one of my labors of love (= reading project) this summer is freedom per se. Amazingly (to me), the idea of liberty as we conjure it today is only a quarter millennium old. My tomes under current study:

Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History.
Michael Barone, Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers.

Here's the way I see the life of individuals (top list), and organized entities (bottom list):

Go on offense.
Give everybody a shot.
Decentralize.
Try a bunch of stuff.
Make it up as you go along.
Get some stuff wrong.
Laugh a lot.
Get some stuff right.
Become a "success."

Extract "lessons learned" or "best practices."
Thicken the Book of Rules.
Become evermore serious.
Enforce the rules to increasingly tight tolerances.
Go on defense.
Install walls.
Protect-at-all-costs today's franchise.
Centralize.
Calcify.
Install taller walls.
Write more rules.
Become irrelevant and-or die.

This master process is my life's work. And my personal joy. (And horror.)

Happy summer.
Try some stuff.

Remember Eleanor Roosevelt:

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

(Ciao, I'm heading out to the woods for my daily dose of brushcutting—a "widow maker" branch broke loose on me yesterday, which I suppose passes the E Roosevelt "scare-the-shit-out-of-myself" test.)

Arthur MacArthur Junior, father to Douglas MacArthur, famously told his son, as Holy Writ on the battlefield, "Never give an order that can't be obeyed." (My military bosses—the good ones, anyway—taught me the same.) My 1973-4 White House boss (and today private equity superstar) Fred Malek likewise said "Operations is policy." (Fred, perhaps not incidentally, was a West Point graduate.) That is, the idea and its execution are inexorably tied—Siamese twins, even.

Richard Perle, a principal intellectual cheerleader of the 2003 incursion into Iraq, echoed many of his fellow travelers when he told Vanity Fair, "I'm getting damned tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said 'Go and design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."

Wrong.
Wrong.
A thousand times Wrong.

Or, rather: Bullshit!

Consider the likes of Jim Baker today, or George Marshall or Thomas Jefferson in times long past. The "policy advisor" must—first and foremost—consider the odds of successfully implementing the suggested policy and the consequences of not doing so or doing so halfway. I can readily wish for some desired end (and I believe Perle's end was indeed desirable), but I may not under any circumstances absolve myself from shoddy execution. As platoon commander, Arthur MacArthur's son or "policy wonk," predicting the shape and expected efficacy of execution is my responsibility as much as the concoction of a brilliant strategy.

Period.

So I loved seeing a fact in a New York Times Magazine story on Mike Oher, a star lineman at University of Mississippi who had a rough childhood. The second highest paying position in the NFL, after quarterback? Left tackle.

Time to come out of the closet!
I care!
(I'm right.)
(I'm pretty sure.)
(Damn sure.)

I posted recently "Mike Vs Tom" about "Mike's" (Mike Porter's) preference for STRATEGY as business' primary explanatory variable. I said mine was EXECUTION (or, preferably, Execution + People) (or, preferably, Execution + People + Enthusiasm + Excellence) (or, preferably, Execution + People + Customers + Enthusiasm + Excellence).

Some who made Comments (Thank you!) said it was obviously not an "either-or" issue. You need both.

Of course you do.
Maybe.

I, in fact, do not denigrate the usefulness of a thoughtful strategy. It's just that it is ... Crystal Clear (to me!) that strategy is in fact unequivocally subordinate to Execution Excellence/Execution Mania/Bias for Action (the latter happens to be "Basic #1" from In Search of Excellence).

More broadly, my money rests on what I'll call the "Infrastructure of Excellence": Superstar People ... Customer Love ... Execution Mania ... Boundless Energy & Enthusiasm ... Relentless Pursuit of Excellence per se.

Consider U.S. Grant. (My favorite topic of late.) General Grant was an "action addict." He constitutionally had to be on the move. Grant won several battles when the Union victory tank was on Empty. Grant had many a detractor, and one principal supporter—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had a "strategy," but it was in tatters because of timid-defensive-incompetent generals. Then, via "execution mania"/"bias for action"/"execution excellence" Grant quickly (What else?) chalked up several unexpected victories in the West: In essence, Lincoln's "strategy" became the exploitation of Grant's growing string of victories. Thence "execution excellence" opportunistically shaped & drove & took precedence over any grand conception of strategy.

Exhibit #2: Jack Welch, subject of a recent Post (& so much more). He is a presumed "strategic genius." I think unequivocally that his "genius" (& GE's in general) was/is ... Execution Mania & Inspired People Development. (And: Energy & Relentlessness.) Of course there's more to the story. Or is there? (Welch was famous for #1, #2, fix or sell—surely that ain't strategy, but a call to relentless action—or else.)

Let's introduce a (to me) closely related "debate."

First: "Strategy" vs "Execution." Next up another sacred elephant: "Leadership" VERSUS "Management." Stupid idea of the decade: "Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing."

Why stupid? Because "great" leaders are greatest at "doin' stuff"—Grant & Welch redux. "Mere" and unloved "management" is ... as I see it ... the "dull" "do it" variable in the success equation. But in the popular formulation, "sexy" "leadership" is de facto equated with woo-woo Strategy (capital "S"). Management's the "anti-intellectual stuff you wouldn't wish on your hated Cousin Doris."

When we equate strategy with leadership we have entered the ... Dumb Zone. Churchill, it is said, was a lousy strategist—but a genius at "inspiring" a nation waaaaay down on its luck to determined and sustained action.

So? Frankly, with Churchill & Welch & Grant as models, I don't give a tinker's damn whether the leader is a "genius" strategist or not. I want my "genius" "leader" to embrace-embody*:

Energy!
Enthusiasm!
Execution Mania!
Inspired People Selection & Development!
Customer Love!
Passion for Excellence!

(*It's the so-called "soft stuff"—but that's another story. Conventional wisdom: Strategy & Numbers = HARD. People & Implementation = SOFT. Aye, the Smell of Idiots is again in the air!)

So leadership ... TO ME ... is pretty much "everything but strategy." That overstates ... but maybe not that much.

I'll go down with my ship on my priority-precedence order: "First" ... Energy-Enthusiasm-Relentlessness-Excellence-Execution-People-Customer Love. "Second" ... whatever (strategy, if you wish).

Bottom line:

Strategy ... last.
"Management" ... rocks.
XX (eXecution, eXcellence) ... rules.
Leaders embrace-embody-exude ... "soft" stuff.

There, I've said it.
Your turn ...

******

Do you love this quote as much as I do? It's from former McKinsey Managing Director Al McDonald, addressing a consulting team: "Never forget implementation, boys. In our work it's what I call the 'missing 98 percent' of the client puzzle."

Love that! Execution-Action-Implementation: THE "MISSING NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT"!

******

(Attached is a PowerPoint titled "Management Versus Leadership?" I've included in it the latest & updated version of "Grant" and, on the topic of execution, a PP titled "Bossidy.")

(Oh yeah, at the top is a 7AM photo from my morning row on Lake St Catherine—about 6 miles from my VT farm.)

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on."

Thanks, Richard!

(Incidentally, sounds eerily like Bill Gates in days gone by.)

I have come to believe that Grant ought to have been the fifth head at Rushmore—I'm sorry he was left out. He was a genius tactician, matchless troop commander, visionary philosopher-politician, and extraordinary human being.

Enjoy! I've had a ball!

Spoke last night in Orlando to eCustomerServiceWorld, one of those "holy-moly"/"parade of ..." events (Giuliani, Tony Robbins, etc). After my speech, I interviewed on stage Larry Bossidy, former Chairman of Allied Signal, former GE Vice Chairman. He and consultant/strategy uber-guru Ram Charan wrote (a couple of years ago) Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. The extraordinary—and accurate, as I see it—hypothesis is that we inordinately pay attention to strategy, customers, innovation, and the like, but not the true discriminator between success and failure—implementation! Moreover, execution is the leader's Job #1, and execution is a "systematic and rigorous discipline" that can be learned and applied by one and all. The truth is, I had read the book, liked it, but had not really dived in. I have done so now (as I prepared for my interview), and I conclude that it is a genuine original, of the utmost importance!

Which led me to ...

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS! Attached you will find two. The first, titled "Bossidy," consists of some quotes from Execution that I found particularly apt. The second is a broader presentation I concocted; it's called "A Bias for Action," which a few of you may remember was Principal #1 from In Search of Excellence (our way, in 1982, of underscoring the importance of implementation ... my shorthand has been/is "too much talk, too little do").

Enjoy ...

[Also find the event slides for the eCustomerServiceWorld event here, and the longer Web version here.—CM]

I've had a couple of run-ins with this—you show up for a US Airways flight and find out you're on United in another terminal, or vice versa. Or, you have one leg of a connecting itinerary on US Airways, and another on United, but neither airline can print a boarding pass for the other.

I've dealt with the service problems brought on by this partnership a few times now, and in each case the employees of both airlines have said to me, verbatim, "it doesn't work." One US Airways employee put it this way: "Some guys upstairs might be making money on this. But the passengers and we who work here have to deal with all the problems." Employees of both airlines have related customer service horror stories to me.

The problem is execution. I'm sure the idea sounded great on paper and in meetings. But, apparently, work was never done to properly implement the program. Customers and front line employees of both airlines are suffering. Do you think the top brass at United and US Airways are focused on fixing these problems, or are they only looking as far superficial performance stats in evaluating this program?

My favorite Stone-ism: "Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them. I look for things that went right and try to build on them." (From Stone's Lessons from an Uncivil Servant; also see Chapter 17 of my Re-imagine!)

That is, Stone understood the utter futility of attempting to "overcome resistance to change" that inevitably occurs when one frontally attacks the current establishment and their icons of past success. Instead, success/change most often emerges from blithely ignoring the establishment's entrenched kingpins—and, instead, prowling organizational byways in pursuit of pioneers who, through sheer guts and grit, have been nefariously installing Exciting New & Revolutionary Ways of Doing Things, simply because they believed it was the Right Thing to Do. Next, our Ignore-the-Negative/Accentuate-the-Positive Change Agent (or Uncivil Servant like Stone) publicizes and celebrates the hell out of the Exciting New Stuff (and its Heroic Purveyor-Champions) ... and openly invites others to emulate this new cadre of Hero-exemplars.

If you stayed awake in Psych 101, you know Bob Stone's approach is the Basic Tenet of Rat Psychology. If you punish bad behavior, the net effect is not, as intended, to wipe it out—but, instead, to drive it underground and inadvertently entrench it. Rather, reinforcing positive behavior causes more and more positive behavior to be emitted—thence simply crowding out the negative stuff until it simply vanishes. It ain't that easy—with rats or bureaucrats—but it ain't that hard either if (if!!!) you stay the course.