Larry Bossidy is one of the world’s most acclaimed CEOs, a man with few peers who has a track record for delivering results. Ram Charan is a legendary advisor to senior executives and boards of directors, a man with unparalleled insight into why some companies are successful and others are not. Together they’ve pooled their knowledge and experience into the one book on how to close the gap between results promised and results delivered that people in business need today. After a long, stellar career with General Electric, Larry Bossidy transformed AlliedSignal into one of the world’s most admired companies and was named CEO of the year in 1998 by Chief Executive magazine. Accomplishments such as 31 consecutive quarters of earnings-per-share growth of 13 percent or more didn’t just happen; they resulted from the consistent practice of the discipline of execution: understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business.
Retired Chairman and CEO of Honeywell International, Inc.; Former vice chairman, General Electric Former Chief Operating Officer of General Electric Credit Corporation (now GE Capital Corporation); Author, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done; Named CEO of the Year, Financial World, 1994 and Chief Executive of the Year by CEO Magazine, 1998; Board of Directors of Merck & Co., Champion International Corporation, and J.P. Morgan & Co.; Incorporated Member of The Business Council and The Business Roundtable; B.A. economics, Colgate University.
What advice to young professionals pursuing executive management positions?
Go to college. Take at least some liberal arts courses, not necessarily at a liberal arts school. Get a broad education even though you have a specialty. In this day and age it’s good to go work first for a couple of years in whatever you think you want to do and then think about graduate school. It’s not a good idea to go to graduate school right out of college. You get more out of graduate school with a few years of experience and you begin to form more clearly what you want to do so that when you get out of graduate school you have a better sense of what interests you and you can make better career choices.
Did you know what you wanted to do when you were younger?
No, the time was different. I wanted to be a professional ball player but I wasn’t good enough. I grew up in a small town where GE was dominant, so the only company I knew about was GE, so I went to work for GE. It wasn’t nearly as planned as I would like to tell you it might have been.
How do undergraduates land a position with GE?
First, you have to be qualified. You have to do well enough in their undergraduate or graduate studies to qualify to join GE. And then when you join, you are given a wide range of assignments that allows you to see multiple industries and if you are successful you get increasing responsibilities. And at some point in time you might progress far enough so you are eligible to become CEO of GE or some place else. You qualify yourself for promotion by accepting diverse assignments, taking on and overcoming difficult challenges. If you are interested in that stuff, then you can grow and set your goal of being a CEO one day.
What is the ideal track for a CEO?
There is no ideal. They are all ideal. You can rise being an engineer or an accountant or a marketing wizard. What you have to do is demonstrate competency, and you have to demonstrate an ability to oversee, stimulate, and mature people. And if you can do that then you get more progressive and challenging assignments and hopefully one | 
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Interviews
