| Book | Main Argument About Discipline | Main Argument About Discipline |
| Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done | - Discipline is integral to strategy execution.
- Getting the job done is critical.
- Make sure operations people understand the plans.
- Link people,strategy,and operations in a systematic process.
- Tenaciously follow through.
- Hold people accountable.
- Reward performers.
- Get rid of or help nonperformers.
- Continuously close the gap between results promised and delivered.
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| James Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Other's Don't | - Develop a culture of discipline.
- Show a fanatical dedication and passion to be the best in the world.
- Core ideology (principles) should never be jettisoned in the interests of expediency or in times of stress.
- Straightforward economic metrics like revenue per employee or cost per store should be used.
- Self-effacing leaders outperform flamboyant ones.
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- Focus on what drives the economic engine.
- Do not permit wavering or wandering.
- Be a hedgehog—go for depth rather than breadth.
- Do what you can do best, not what you want to do.
- Make continuous improvements that are evolutionary and not revolutionary in nature.
- Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restruc-
turings almost certainly fail.
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| Robert Kaplan and David Norton, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action | - Communicate clearly and consistently.
- Tie strategy to implementation.
- Link performance and incentives to outcomes.
- Execute by connecting goals to resources.
- Motivate employees to follow company plans.
- "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
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- "To develop advantage, deepen a firm's ties with its current customers.
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| Donald Mitchell, The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continually Developing a More Profitable Business Model | - Never let up.
- Create a stronghold that prevents entry by competitors.
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- Outsource to be more focused on profitable endeavors.
- Increase customer intimacy to understand customer needs and wants.
- Customize offerings to make them more closely match customer needs.
- Minimize or eliminate unnecessary costs that burden the customer.
- Modify pricing or pricing perceptions to increase profitability.
- Add benefits to the customer's to whom your customers sell.
- Add benefits by working with your
customer’s partners and suppliers.
- Continually refine and reinvent your firm's business model.
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| Nitin Nohria, William Joyce, and Bruce Roberson, What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success | - Clearly communicate the firm's
strategy.
- Develop and maintain flawless execution.
- Support high performance metrics.
- Simplify the work to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Deliver precisely what customers want.
- Continually improve the firm's productivity.
- Keep leaders and directors highly committed to the firm and its goals.
| - Devise and maintain a focused strategy.
- Keep growing the core business.
- Build business around a clear value proposition for customers.
- Base strategy upon what
customers, partners, and investors want.
- Fine-tune the strategy to changes in the marketplace.
- Only innovate if you're absolutely certain of industry disruption.
- In general, beware of the unfamiliar;stick to the knitting.
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| C.K.Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswany, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers | | - Allow customers to design their own individualized products.
- Facilitate shift to experience environments.
- Deliver value to customers through personalized interaction (cocreation).
- Dialogue with customers to get insights into their mindset about product risks and benefits.
- Make customers part of the corporate competence base.
- Build customer satisfaction and trust.
- Endeavor to create a unique customer experience across multiple channels and transactions.
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| Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersman, The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market | - Pursue three value disciplines--operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy.
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- Obsolete your own products before competitors.
- Do not cater to a wide market.
- Cater to specific customers whose desires you know well and with whom you have a trusting relationship.
- Be intimate with a select group of customers.
- Focus on no-frills products when demand is huge and customers care more about price than choice.
- Focus on best-performing products when you have ideas for highly desirable, previously unknown products.
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| Michael Treacy, Double Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It No Matter What | - Commit to a conscious, managed set of strategies.
- Commit to superior value.
- Use gross profits as the measure of value creation for customers.
| - Leverage existing advantage.
- Take small bites.
- Spread your risk with a portfolio of small initiatives.
- Derive growth from steady, one-step-at-a-time progress rather than high-risk, bet-the-company transformation.
- Retain your existing customer base; sell more to that base because it's harder to acquire a new base.
- Don't drift too far outside your area of expertise; expand mainly in adjacent markets.
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| Chris Zook, Profit from the Core: Growth Strategy in an Era of Turbulence | - Build market power in a well- defined core.
- Don't leave your core unprotected.
- Do not make errors.
- Systematically block competitors.
- Keep costs low for the benefit of customers.
| - From focus comes growth.
- By narrowing your scope, create expansion.
- A well-defined core business is key to competitive advantage.
- Realize the full potential of your core by moving with caution to
businesses that are only adjacent to your core.
- Avoid misadventures of growth.
- Only expand or redefine your core when you're forced to in times of extreme turbulence.
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| Chris Zook, Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots | - Employ methods to tilt odds inyour company’s favor and control the cost of failure.
- Identify "adjacencies" in which you're already participating and assess how you're doing (market share, profitability, investment).
| - Identify adjacencies close by that you are considering or that you might have rejected.
- Identify other adjacencies that might seem promising because competitors or new entrants are moving to these spaces or because technology or other factors have opened them up.
- Put together combinations of "adjacency moves" into areas related to your core, such as new product lines or new channels of distribution.
- Keeps risk down; by moving in well-trod paths close to your core business, there is less risk than by expanding using other growth methods.
- Competitive advantage comes from what the firm already knows and does best.
- Push boundaries, but just of your core business.
- Make small improvements in these dimensions.
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