Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done – Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Most organisations have good strategies. Most organisations have talented people. Most organisations have adequate resources. And most organisations still fail to produce the results their strategies promise — not because the strategy was wrong, not because the people were incompetent, but because of a single, systemic failure that almost nobody talks about honestly. That failure is execution. And Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan — endorsed by Jack Welch as the definitive book on how to get things done — is the book that finally treats execution not as an afterthought to strategy but as the most important leadership discipline of all.

Now in a New and Updated Edition, this landmark business book has transformed how the world’s most effective leaders think about the relationship between planning, people, and results.

The Central Revelation: Most leaders think their job is to set the direction — to create the strategy, articulate the vision, and inspire the team. What Bossidy and Charan demonstrate, with devastating clarity, is that direction without execution is fiction. The real job of a leader is not to have great ideas. It is to build the systems, the processes, and the culture that consistently translate ideas into outcomes. Execution is not a tactical afterthought. It is the core discipline that separates organisations that achieve from organisations that merely aspire.

What This Book Covers:

The Execution Gap:

• Why most strategic plans fail — not because the strategy was wrong but because the organisation lacked the execution discipline to implement it
• The specific ways that leaders unknowingly create execution gaps — through vague goal-setting, poor people decisions, and failure to follow through
• Why execution has been systematically undervalued in business education and leadership development — and what that costs organisations
• The cultural and behavioural foundations of an execution-oriented organisation — what they look, feel, and sound like in practice

The Three Core Processes of Execution:

The People Process:

• Why the people process is the most important of the three — because everything else depends on having the right people in the right roles doing the right things
• How to assess people honestly — not just on past performance but on their ability to execute in future conditions
• The specific conversations that identify whether someone has the execution capabilities your organisation needs
• How to build a leadership pipeline that consistently produces execution-capable leaders rather than just strategically brilliant ones
• The difficult people decisions — moving people out of roles they cannot execute in — that most leaders avoid and that most organisations suffer from

The Strategy Process:

• Why most strategies fail the execution test before implementation even begins — because they were built without the execution reality in mind
• The specific questions every strategy must be able to answer before it deserves resources — the execution stress test that separates viable plans from beautiful documents
• How to build a strategy that is concrete enough to execute, flexible enough to adapt, and specific enough to hold people accountable
• Why the people who will execute a strategy must be involved in building it — and how that involvement transforms both the strategy and the commitment

The Operations Process:

• How to link strategy to operations — the specific systems and rhythms that translate annual plans into quarterly and monthly actions
• The operating plan — what it must contain, how it must be built, and how it must be managed to produce results rather than just reports
• How to set priorities that actually get executed rather than priorities that simply exist on a slide deck
• The rhythm of business reviews — how to run them, what to discuss, and how to use them to identify and address execution gaps in real time
• How to build accountability into your operating system — so that follow-through is not optional but structural

The Behaviours of Execution-Oriented Leaders:

• Know your people and your business — why leaders who are disconnected from operational reality cannot execute
• Insist on realism — why honest assessment of where you actually are is the foundation of getting where you want to go
• Set clear goals and priorities — the specific discipline of focusing organisational energy rather than dispersing it
• Follow through — the single most underrated execution behaviour, and why most leaders fail at it
• Reward the doers — how incentive systems either support or undermine execution culture
• Expand people’s capabilities — why execution-oriented leaders are also the best developers of execution-capable talent
• Know yourself — how self-awareness about your own execution strengths and gaps makes you a better execution leader

Jack Welch’s Endorsement: When the man widely considered the greatest business leader of the twentieth century — who transformed General Electric from a $14 billion company to a $410 billion company — calls this book “a compelling business story of how to get things done,” that is not a casual endorsement. It is a practitioner’s recognition that this book captures something he spent decades learning and practising. Every Kenyan business leader should take that seriously.

Who This Book Is For:

• CEOs, MDs, and senior executives responsible for organisational performance who want the most complete framework for building execution discipline
• Middle managers and department heads who sense that their team has good intentions but consistently underdelivers on commitments
• Entrepreneurs and business owners who have a clear vision but struggle to translate it into consistent operational results
• MBA students and business school graduates who want the real-world complement to the strategy frameworks their programmes teach
• HR and organisational development professionals who want to build execution capability systematically rather than hoping it emerges
• Every Kenyan organisation — corporate, NGO, government, or startup — that has experienced the frustration of a good plan that did not produce the promised results
• Every reader of Built to Last (Collins) and 100+ Management Models (Trompenaars) who wants the operational complement to those strategic frameworks

Why Kenyan Business Leaders Need This Book: Kenya’s corporate and entrepreneurial landscape is full of excellent strategies, impressive presentations, and well-resourced plans that consistently underperform. The execution gap is not uniquely Kenyan — but it is acutely felt in organisations that are growing faster than their execution systems can sustain. Execution gives every Kenyan business leader the specific, practical framework to close that gap — building the people processes, the strategy processes, and the operating processes that turn good intentions into consistent results.

At Ksh 100, this is the most practically valuable business book in your entire leadership and management catalogue.

Book Details:

• 📖 Authors: Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck
• 📄 Format: PDF eBook (instant download via WhatsApp or email)
• 📚 Edition: New and Updated Edition
• 💰 Price: Ksh 100 only
• 🚀 Delivery: Instant after M-Pesa payment confirmation

👉 Order now on cliffmatt.co.ke — Pay via M-Pesa, receive your PDF instantly.