The Execution Factor: The One Skill That Drives Success
Kim Perell
McGraw-Hill Education (September 2018)

“Vision without execution is hallucination.” Thomas Edison

Leaders in any organization — whatever its size and nature may be — would be well-advised to keep Edison’s observation in mind as well as this one by Peter Drucker: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Kim Perell has accomplished a great deal in her life thus far because of several factors but she focuses primarily on five in this book: vision, passion, action, resilience, and relationships.  Each is important to ultimate achievement through execution but passion seems to be — for Perell — essential and probably for most other people.  Few, I think, are as passionate about achieving success as Perell clearly is.

Presumably she agrees with Edison and Drucker. (In fact, I’m certain she does.) She may also agree with me that people will not achieve whatever success they seek unless they are PASSIONATE about doing so. If Perell weren’t passionate about helping as many people as possible, she wouldn’t have written this book to share what she has learned.

Long ago, I concluded that I could not motivate others but I could help activate self-motivation in others and Perell is far better at doing that than I am. So I think hers will be the most valuable book many people ever read. Obviously, she won’t be there in person to fire them up but what she says and how she says it in will have the next best impact.