Marcia Blenko - Decide and Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization

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Copyright 2010 Bain & Company, Inc.

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First eBook Edition: September 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4221-4757-3

Two people above all have helped to deliver this book.

Jenny Davis-Peccoud has been tireless in her contributions to the thinking and the process that produced Decide & Deliver. As the director of Bains Organization Practice day to day, she has played a crucial role in directing, analyzing, and drawing insights from the research. Without her focus, skillful project management, and good humor, three spirited and vocal authors would still be debating drafts.

John Case helped to shape the concepts and the communication of our ideas. His masterful prose has made Decide & Deliver considerably more readable, and his resilience and patience made the writing process a lot more fun.

Many others have contributed to this book, some in ways they may not even realize. We have had the good fortune to work closely with many client executives who know what it means to decide and deliver. Some are mentioned in these pages. Others have contributed but are not mentioned by name. We thank them all for providing us with opportunities to teach a little and learn a lot along the way.

We benefited enormously from the support and brainpower of many talented business professionals at Bain, including those who conducted the research and analysis contained in this book. Special thanks go to Susan Anderson, Cornelia De Ruiter, Anna Dominey, Maggie Locher, Christopher Lowell, Ben Olds, Joe Rieder, Tristan Smith, and Amit Thaper.

The support and encouragement of our colleagues at Bain kept us going. We are privileged to work with people who make the time to share their views and experiences, are always willing to listen and consider new ways of thinking, and are unfailingly supportive and constructive. Particular thanks go to Jimmy Allen, Mark Gottfredson, Wendy Miller, Phil Schefter, Ingo Wagner, and Chris Zook, all of whom generously contributed their time to provide thoughtful feedback at various stages of the books development. Many other colleagues contributed as wellto each of them, our thanks.

Richard Steele, now a partner at The Bridgespan Group, merits special mention. His collaboration on a number of articles with Michael earlier in their careers contributed to important insights in Decide & Deliver.

Our friends and families have contributed ideas and reactions as we worked to make our ideas practical. In particular, we thank our spouses for their patience, encouragement, and support throughout. And our children, for ensuring there was little risk of taking ourselves too seriously.

Last but not least, Melinda Merino and the team at Harvard Business Review Press have been invaluable in providing feedback, inspiration, and a guiding hand on the process.

Whatever the merits of Decide & Deliver, much is owed to all these people. Whatever its faults, the authors had the D. If that seems cryptic, please read on...

Trevor Gregory was frustrated. A senior executive of ABB UK, the British division of the big Zurich-based power technology and automation company, Gregory was racing to put together several critical bids for clients, including the Channel Islands electricity grid, London Underground, and National Grid. The opportunities played to all of ABBs strengths as a global engineering colossusthey required technologies, project delivery, and services from several parts of the company. Few competitors could match these soup-to-nuts offerings. The contracts would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for ABB over many years.

But instead of cruising through, Gregory was bumping up against one organizational obstacle after another. The company seemed to reinvent the process for submitting major bids every time a bid came up, even though multimillion-dollar proposals like these were regular events. Worse, each of ABBs units had its own profit targets and set its own transfer prices, including a margin acceptable to that unit. By the time a bid got through the chain of ABB units, the end price was often too high to be competitive. Gregory and other managers then faced an exasperating choice. They could go in high and lose the business. They could walk away without bidding. Or they could invest blood, sweat, and tears in trying to pull the bid together, piece by laborious piece.

These opportunities are really important, Gregory thought to himself. Weve got to make them happen. But he dreaded the arduous internal negotiations required to assemble the bids. Why on earth, he wondered, didnt his company work better? Why wasnt it set up to make good decisions on a routine basis for the benefit of the whole business?

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT how to fix decision failures like the ones that plagued ABB. Its about how to create an organization that humsone that can make and execute good decisions, faster than the competition, and without too much (or too little) time and trouble.

ABBs situation was particularly severe, as well see in a moment: its decision failures led it to the brink of bankruptcy. But most failures are chronic rather than acute, and they show up in many companies, not just those that are courting insolvency. The signs are familiar. Decisions take longer than they should. They are made by the wrong people or in the wrong part of the organization or with the wrong information, and so turn out badly. They arent made well, because no one is sure whos responsible for making them, or because the organization has created structures or incentives that virtually guarantee a poor outcome. Sometimes, of course, decisions are made, maybe even in a timely fashion. But then they are badly executed. Or else the debate starts all over again and they are never executed at all.

No company can live up to its full potential unless it can decide and deliver. Good companies cant become great. Troubled companies cant escape mediocrity. And it isnt just financial results that suffer. Organizations that cant decide and deliver are dispiriting to their employees. From the C-suite to the front line, people feel as if theyre stuck in molasses or trapped inside a Dilbert comic strip. Aggravations and absurdities abound. The European division of an American automaker, for example, repeatedly lagged behind competitors in bringing out new features on its cars. The reason? Marketing thought it was in charge of deciding on new features. Product development thought it was in charge. The two functions had different incentivesmarketings were primarily on sales, product developments on costsand so could never agree. Every proposal had to be thrashed out in long, contentious meetings. It isnt hard to imagine how the people in these functionsindeed, pretty much everybody in the organizationfelt about coming to work in the morning.