His book Execution, lauded for its practicality, spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times best‐seller list.

Because we subscribe to the 70–20–10 rule of development—70% challenging assignments, 20% developmental relationships, and 10% coursework—we believe most development should take place on the job.

Full Performers Should Be Tested for Excess Capacity—Then Promoted If They Demonstrate It Excess capacity is a sign that someone is ready to take on more responsibility or move up a leadership level, and it should catalyze promotions. People can be tested by assigning work from the desk of someone on the leadership level above them and seeing which

Roles Remaining Undefined Most companies fail to create Leadership Portraits that are differentiated by leadership level. In fact, Leadership Portraits tend to be nonexistent. Required performance tends to be financial and operational rather than a complete set of performance requirements that include leadership results. Consequently, it's difficul

where things stand, conduct several interviews with leaders‐of‐others and leaders‐of‐leaders—about six interviews with each layer is sufficient. Call these work interviews and clarify that the discussion is not about performance—it's about getting role clarity. Make sure the person being interviewed doesn't feel judged—if they do, you won't get acc

For Each Layer, Clarify the Differentiation in Accountability Between Layers/Roles Start by focusing on the leaders‐of‐others and the leaders‐of‐leaders. In our experience, significant breakage occurs at both of these levels. In any event those layers contain most of your leadership positions. To get a full understanding of

Function leaders spend time learning the state‐of‐the‐art. Business leaders learn the state of business. What's new in products, strategies, markets, legislation, and so on is important information for setting direction and making decisions.

Day‐to‐day problem‐solving is important in function work. Business leaders have to give that up. Seeing the patterns of problems and their root cause is important to the business leader. Everyone else in the business is responsible, in one way or another, for solving them. The business leader makes systemic changes to keep problems from recurring.

Business Leaders Deliver Short‐Term and Long‐Term Profit It is easy to think of the business leader's profit responsibility in terms of numbers: the financials. Looking at the work that way can lead to numbers‐based decisions, for example, “cut costs quickly,” “get rid of training,” “pump up sales by giving discounts.” This may be slightly exaggera