Most of the corporate executives know that the key to success lies in effective execution. But many of them fail because they don’t put into practice in a systematic way what they know. Successful companies or leaders pursue execution as a science with a conscious, systematic and disciplined rigour. They don’t allow their visions and strategies to remain on paper but relentlessly convert them into reality.

Another important success-factor in execution is change. In the fast-changing world of the future, rigid formulas of strategy or execution will not work. The factors of change have to be built into the strategic and executive framework.

For effective execution, it has to be viewed in a holistic perspective, as part of a total management process, and built into every stage of the process, from setting goals and charting the strategy to every step of the process of implementation, or in other words, it has to be backward integrated with vision and strategy and forward integrated with implementation.

This issue examines the challenge of execution in a changing world in the light of new insights, research and best practices on the subject.

M.S. Srinivasan

The author is a Research Associate at Sri Aurobindo Society and on the editorial board of Fourth Dimension Inc. His major areas of interest are Management and Indian Culture.