Even people who pinpoint execution as the cause of failure tend to think of it in terms of attention to detail. Ben Rosen used the right word in his remarks, for example, but if he understood what execution actually requires, Compaq’s leadership never got the message.

To understand execution, you have to keep three key points in mind:
• Execution is a discipline, and integral to strategy.
• Execution is the major job of the business leader.
• Execution must be a core element of an organization’s culture.

Execution Is a Discipline

People think of execution as the tactical side of business. That’s the first big mistake. T actics are central to execution, but execution is not tactics. Execution is fundamental to strategy and has to shape it. No worthwhile strategy can be planned without taking into account the organization’s ability to execute it. If you’re talking about the smaller specifics of getting things done, call the process
implementation, or sweating the details, or whatever you want to. But don’t confuse execution with tactics.

Execution is a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability. It includes making assumptions about the business environment, assessing the organization’s capabilities, linking strategy
to operations and the people who are going to implement the strategy, synchronizing those people and their various disciplines, and linking rewards to outcomes. It also includes mechanisms for changing assumptions as the environment changes and upgrading the company’s capabilities to meet the challenges of an ambitious strategy.

Taken from: Execution The discipline of Getting things Done