Execution

In my first post I wrote that the US Ivy League university Dartmouth College conducted research that showed that, in order to succeed in business, you must excel at four primary management practices:

• Strategy;
• Execution;
• Culture, and
• Structure.

 
There are also four secondary management practices, of which you have to excel at two, but we’ll leave those till later. This month I’m moving on to the second primary practice – Execution.
 
Whereas strategy is about deciding what you’re going to do to achieve your goal, execution is about actually doing those things. It is where the rubber hits the road. Hopefully the rubber is on a Tesla in ludicrous mode, because the faster you execute, the sooner you will hit your BHAG.

Execution is a simple concept, but far from easy to pull off. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, in their book “The Execution Premium,” wrote “Various surveys over the past two decades indicate that 60% to 80% of companies fell far short of the targets expressed in their strategic plans.”
 
In my own work as a business coach, I often hear excuses when I ask about progress on strategic execution. “I was just too busy.” “We had a crisis and I was the only one who could fix it.” I know that if I can help a client get 50% better at execution, their life will change dramatically, and for the better.

There are good execution habits that you can learn and apply in your business, or indeed in any organisation. We’ll go over these in the next few months. But for me the most fundamental criteria for success is a mindset change.

There are good execution habits that you can learn and apply in your business, or indeed in any organisation.

The nemesis of strategic execution is Business as Usual (BAU) or the Whirlwind. You know, serving customers, ordering inventory and supplies, payroll and bookkeeping, updating the website, doing sales calls, etc. They are all extremely important tasks, in fact your business would cease to exist without most of them. You can’t fail to do them, or more accurately, you can’t fail to ensure they are done. The truth is, however, that BAU will always expand to fill 100% of the time available, if you let it.
 
You must carve out some time. Without fail. Every week, you must do the one thing that will take you closer to your BHAG. This is the mindset change – ruthless refusal to allow your strategic execution time to be stolen from you by anything.