Execution: It's All About Getting It Done!
Part 3 -- What Is Execution, Where Does It Start, Where Does It End
by Janice Giannini
As a trusted business consultant and advisor, Janice has been helping clients achieve their stretch goals and create a new normal since 2005. She engages with senior executives and teams, particularly in complex businesses where misalignment is blocking their desired success, to develop and execute practical business strategies and plans. Clients have found her especially helpful when they recognize they must integrate an eagle’s eye and worm’s eye view in order to identify and remove obstacles. Janice has consistently taken on those challenges that others chose to run from. This typically involves those challenging times when failure is not an option and integrating business, technology and people changes must be accomplished simultaneously. As a result, many of her clients are complex organizations who won't settle for anything less than developing widespread professional competence.
In Part 3 we focus on developing the plans and metrics required to succeed. If I may use an analogy, it's a lot like taking big rocks and breaking them into little rocks, and then into pebbles. A disciplined, repeatable, measurable process that can be adjusted, based on the outcome desired is the crux of achieving improved results.
Sometimes the hardest part is determining what size rock is really needed!
The Critical thinking evaluation process starts with understanding the difference between needs and wants or desires, objectively creating the list of necessary and sufficient goals with potential consequences that will produce the needed performance level.
The end result of this evaluation is the list of 6 to 8 necessary and sufficient goals for the group. The next step in this process is simultaneously the most critical, the most time consuming, and the most successful. As the action steps, we discuss below, are being evaluated for implementation, remember the "WHAT", "WHY", "HOW", "WHEN", AND "WHO" QUESTIONS.
- Take each goal (the big rock), and successively break it down into it's component sub goals (little rocks) until each step (pebbles) is a small enough step to measure and achieve
- At each step along the way, critically analyze the successive actions that need to occur, in what order, by whom, and by when, in order to achieve success.
- Take the time to understand and articulate the negative impact of not attaining the goal
- Focus on the work that enables needed results to be achieved
- Identify the positive scenarios or outcomes that you would like to occur that will support the achievement of the goal(s). How will the team need to respond for each scenario/ outcome?
- What are all of the outcomes that can get in the way of achieving needed goals and how the team will respond when and if they occur? What needs to be done to proactively minimize the occurrence of the obstacles?
At each step, there is an associated clearly stated action that includes the:
- Responsible person,
- Date by which the action step needs to be accomplished.
- Consequences of not achieving the goal.
The Value of this critical thinking and planning process is several fold. This can:
- Provide a roadmap to guide actions, progress, and deviations from the path as well as a frame of reference to understand what is actually happening.
- Provide a mechanism for accountability for forward progress. We distinguish here between motion and progress. Being busy is not the same thing as accomplishing something. Part of this exercise is for the team to clearly distinguish what are outcomes needed versus outcomes that happen.
- Put timelines in focus. By measuring progress, it is possible to determine expected accomplishment dates and adjust the timeline as needed.
- Enable meaningful re-pathing when obstacles occur
The last discussion point is that objectivity is critical.
- Is the team responding to what is really happening?
- Is the team measuring and using the as-is situation as a base for improvement?
- An organized roadmap, with measurements, that truly reflects the needed result, tracked over time, is the best method to indicate real progress.
In the Part 4 we will speak to the fourth focal point "Handling process challenges and stumbles" and the impact they have on an organization's ability to execute flawlessly and "Get It Done!"
- Addressing the What, Why, How, When, and Who of effective execution
- Properly defining the execution and emotional mindsets needed,
- Thinking through the plans and metrics required to succeed,
- Handling the process challenges and inevitable stumbles along the way, and
- Creating a tight enough linkage between execution and strategy to form an iterative cycle.