Managers at General Electric don’t often articulate strategy but repeatedly emphasise that “execution is the strategy.” This book addresses the crucial and embarrassing gap between strategy formulation and its successful execution. The authors make a bold assertion that “a significant part of this challenge and problem springs from a human tendency to conceptualise much more quickly than to...

Barclays Bank, a relatively new entrant into India, has yet to learn that Indian courts and regulators do not take kindly to recovery threats by big lenders. Not only has it employed a call-centre to make recovery calls, but it apparently goofed up and has given the recovery centre a list of potential customers for telemarketing. Consequently, people who have nothing to do with Barclays...

The South China Mall is supposedly the world’s biggest. It waits for shoppers to turn up

In May 1995, the New York Times ran an article on a new mall coming up in China. The piece opened with: “After construction workers finish plastering a replica of the Arc de Triomphe and buffing the imitation streets of Hollywood, Paris and Amsterdam, a giant new shopping theme park here will proclaim...