Quotes from Gary L. Neilson

A brilliant strategy, blockbuster product, or breakthrough technology can put you on the competitive map, but only solid execution can keep you there.

When decisions were finally made, they had generally been vetted by so many parties that no one person could be held accountable.

Rational decisions are necessarily bounded by the information available to employees. If managers don't understand what it will cost to capture an incremental dollar in revenue, they will always pursue the incremental revenue.

The four building blocks that managers can use to improve strategy execution—decision rights, information, structure, and motivators—are inextricably linked.

Every one strengthens one or more of the building blocks executives can use to improve their strategy-execution capability: clarifying decision rights, improving information, establishing the right motivators, and restructuring the organization. The

As long as companies continue to attack their execution problems primarily or solely with structural or motivational initiatives, they will continue to fail. As we've seen, they may enjoy short-term results, but they will inevitably slip back into old habits because they won't have addressed the root causes of failure.

Employees at three out of every five companies rated their organization weak at execution

As we've stressed, you should first take steps to address decision rights and information, and then design the necessary changes to motivators and structure to support the new design.

Once people had a clear idea of what decisions they should and should not be making, holding them accountable for decisions felt fair.

Execution is the result of thousands of decisions made every day by employees acting according to the information they have and their own self-interest.

In addressing only structure, management had attacked the visible symptoms of poor performance but not the underlying cause—how people made decisions and how they were held accountable.