Non Profit Strategy - Burning Man
SPOTLIGHT ON THE EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION
Spotlight
ARTWORK Rune Guneriussen, Twentyfourseven #21, 2006, c-print/aluminum, 125 x 218 cm
Drawing a line between strategy and execution almost guarantees failure. by Roger L. Martin
The Execu
64 Harvard Business Review July–August 2010
HBR.ORG
Roger L. Martin (martin@ rotman.utoronto.ca) is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009).
tion Trap
T
SPOTLIGHT ON THE EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION
66 Harvard Business Review July–August 2010
The idea that execution is distinct from strategy has become firmly ensconced in management thinking over the past decade.
So much so, in fact, that if you run a Google search for “A mediocre strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed,” you will get more than 42,600 references. Where the idea comes from is not certain, but in 2002, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, Jamie Dimon, now CEO of JPMorgan Chase, opined, “I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management.” In the same year, Larry Bossidy, former AlliedSignal CEO, coauthored the best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, in which the authors declared, “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t well executed.” The trouble is, Dimon and Bossidy’s doctrine— that execution is the key to a strategy’s success—is as flawed as it is popular. That popularity discourages us from questioning the principle’s validity. Let’s suppose you had a theory that heavenly objects revolve around the Earth. Increasingly, you find that this theory doesn’t predict the movement of the stars and planets very well. Is it more rational to respond by questioning the theory that the universe revolves around the Earth or to keep positing ever more
Spotlight
ARTWORK Rune Guneriussen, Twentyfourseven #21, 2006, c-print/aluminum, 125 x 218 cm
Drawing a line between strategy and execution almost guarantees failure. by Roger L. Martin
The Execu
64 Harvard Business Review July–August 2010
HBR.ORG
Roger L. Martin (martin@ rotman.utoronto.ca) is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009).
tion Trap
T
SPOTLIGHT ON THE EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION
66 Harvard Business Review July–August 2010
The idea that execution is distinct from strategy has become firmly ensconced in management thinking over the past decade.
So much so, in fact, that if you run a Google search for “A mediocre strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed,” you will get more than 42,600 references. Where the idea comes from is not certain, but in 2002, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, Jamie Dimon, now CEO of JPMorgan Chase, opined, “I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management.” In the same year, Larry Bossidy, former AlliedSignal CEO, coauthored the best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, in which the authors declared, “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t well executed.” The trouble is, Dimon and Bossidy’s doctrine— that execution is the key to a strategy’s success—is as flawed as it is popular. That popularity discourages us from questioning the principle’s validity. Let’s suppose you had a theory that heavenly objects revolve around the Earth. Increasingly, you find that this theory doesn’t predict the movement of the stars and planets very well. Is it more rational to respond by questioning the theory that the universe revolves around the Earth or to keep positing ever more