Long-time Georgia journalist Andy Bowen, who launched his own public relations firm in Atlanta five years ago, has teamed up with a client to write the new business book, “5 Steps to Predictable Business Success (Or, how to get the elephants off the conference room table).” Co-written by Laurence B. Valant, CEO of Denver-based Valant & Co., the book was published by Clearview Communications Inc. in September, and is now available through bookstores and on the web at www.valantco.com.

Bowen was editor at the Carrollton Times-Georgian, Marietta Daily Journal and Rome News Tribune, and was later press secretary for former Georgia Secretary of State Max Cleland. He was a vice president at Ketchum and Fletcher Martin Ewing Public Relations in Atlanta before founding Clearview Communications in 2002.

As explained in the book, The Valant Execution Model™ guarantees predictable business success if executives adhere to the model faithfully, become fully involved in all of its processes, and work hard to maintain its ongoing application throughout their enterprise. The guarantee of success comes when executives and managers learn how to get to accountability with their staffs and build a culture dedicated to execution.

At 184 pages in eye-pleasing 14-point type, “5 Steps” has been designed by its authors to be an easy read on a business trip or quiet weekend afternoon. It is co-written by Bowen in a style that allows the reader to imagine actually having an enjoyable conversation with Valant, a former Marine and CEO of several companies who has more than 30 years of experience improving performance and increasing profits for 165 businesses of all kinds.

However, Valant, Bowen and the rest of the Valant & Company consulting team will tell you the book provides only a glimpse of the dedication, absolute commitment, and sweat equity that must be invested to leverage the Valant Execution Model to its fullest potential.

Starting with complete buy-in and ongoing support from the Chief Executive Officer, the model must become part of the culture of the enterprise in order to achieve total organizational accountability that inevitably will lead to ongoing effective execution. The entire process starts with the CEO’s vision of where the company should be within a set timeframe.

Under the Valant Execution Model, the five steps, or tiers, that must be thoroughly examined and for which action plans and goals must be developed are:

• Objectives
• Obstacles
• Strategies
• Organization
• Compensation

Valant and Bowen’s book explains that once outcomes have been agreed upon and perfected for these five tiers of the business enterprise, interlocking goals supporting realization of the outcomes are developed for all managers. Total accountability is achieved by requiring managers – from the CEO on down to the loading dock supervisor – to report in groups weekly (without fail!) on how they are meeting their personal deliverables designed to support successful achievement of theirs, their peers’ and the organization’s goals.

Weekly measurement of performance is managed by a document Valant has dubbed the 13-Week Commitment Plan™. Every manager has his/her own personalized commitment plan that quantifies performance weekly against specific deliverables. However, the beauty of the process is that everyone’s plan supports everyone else’s up and down the entire management chain. Thus, the CEO’s vision is known to and supported by all managers.

One hugely positive result of this system is that everyone is talking to everyone else about how they are meeting their interlocking quantitative goals each and every week for phases of a full quarter each, so there are few surprises (and, performance reviews take only 10 minutes). It is unambiguous communication at its best, and that results in people talking about sensitive issues that everyone was afraid (embarrassed, timid, intimidated, apathetic, whatever) to talk about before the model was adopted. These overlooked and avoided issues having to do with personnel, operational, financial or material matters are like elephants on the conference room table – everyone knows they are there, but no one wants to acknowledge their presence, much less herd them from the room.

After reading this informative, entertaining and educational book by Valant and Bowen, you can begin to get rid of your own elephants and start thinking about how you can chart your organization’s course toward predictable business success.

For more information or to order a copy of “5 Steps to Predictable Business Success,” please visit www.valantco.com.