There are several good books available today on the topic of business execution.
This is not too surprising to me given the number of business leaders I meet who lament the challenges they’re having in executing their growth strategy.
It’s also inspired me to read/re-read several books on the topic of execution including:
“Execution” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
“Traction” by Gino Wickman
“Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” by Verne Harnish
“The 12 Week Year” by Brian P. Moran
“The Four Disciplines of Execution” by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling.
Each book has its merits and some are simply outstanding (but you’ll have to read them yourself to find out!).
The primary topic explored in these books is the importance of getting things done.
Businesses and individuals frequently spin and spin with significant wasted effort and little progress. These books outline processes and approaches for prioritization and emphasize the necessity of reducing distractions, staying focused, and saying “no” much more than “yes” – particularly, once a business has reached critical mass. All fair points, to be sure.
But, what if this intense focus is concentrated on the wrong thing? What if we’re solving the wrong problem?
In my experience, we’re much more likely to attribute business issues to gaps in execution versus gaps in strategy or decision making. But, isn’t determining “the right things to do” even more important than “doing things right”? That is, isn’t the former a necessary condition for the latter to deliver any value whatsoever?
An example:
When faced with a serious medical concern, we go to great lengths to get opinions prior to choosing a course of action. Our surgeon may operate flawlessly, but we don’t want organs removed needlessly! Yet, in business, it sometimes seems we can’t wait for someone to “make a decision and move on”.
Many organizations rather habitually demand and reward activity vs diagnosis. But why?
A few hypotheses:
Carry-over from the Industrial Era. Activity (doing things) is more visible than thinking (which often looks like doing nothing). In the industrial age, visible activity was a good proxy for working hard and most workers didn’t make many business decisions. Visible activity did usually equate to outputs.
In contrast, in today’s knowledge worker economy and era of multi-tasking and cross-functional training, scores of business decisions are frequently made every day. Some of this industrial era philosophy has likely been sustained in part due to the “baby boomer” generation whose members have held leadership positions in many organizations.
As a group, this demographic has tended to be less technology prone and somewhat change averse. We can already begin to see some of these dynamics changing as baby boomers retire and more tech-savvy millennials fill vacated roles.
All of this begs the question of whether historic Industrial Era measures to gauge performance are still appropriate today, or whether we need to find new ways to assess both individual and collective performance.
We’re too busy to slow down – and think. The incredible pace of today’s modern economy, including professional/personal plates that are frequently too full, results in a tendency to create and perpetuate cultures of busyness and urgency.
As this wisdom goes: doing something is better than doing nothing. In this swirl, we feel too busy, and the demands too great, to take an occasional timeout and ask – what problem are we trying to solve, anyway? And, do we believe it remains the central problem?
Attribution of performance gaps to desire and effort. An apparent universal tendency is to conclude that failures in individual performance are primarily due to unwillingness or a lack of desire or effort.
Whether it’s our kids in school, a friend who hasn’t returned our text, or employees who aren’t achieving their goals, our default conclusion is that they either don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough.
One client that I work with is a highly successful leadership coach. He recently commented that in his decades of coaching he’s seen this belief tendency to be pervasive. But, when he’s explored the interactions between a leader and his or her team, the real issues of communication, clarity, and expectations emerge. Rarely, is it an issue of desire or effort.
It’s hard to see or admit we’re wrong. One element of effective leadership is the ability to make difficult and decisive decisions.
At times, though, this ability can backfire and impede the very results we seek. We remain committed to our initial assessment of a problem, and are mentally closed to other possibilities. In the discipline of behavioral psychology this is known as “confirmation bias” and it occurs regularly in both business and life.
Further complicating matters is that as the visible leaders in our organizations, humbling oneself to say, “I’m not sure anymore” or “I was wrong in my initial assessment” can be hard to do.
A common, growth-related example that I frequently observe is the tendency for businesses that are struggling to grow revenue to primarily attribute that problem to the sales organization. Now, the sales team may indeed be (a big) part of the problem.
But, when a business has changed out sales members or rearranged the team multiple times, one should dig a bit further. How compelling is the product/service offering? Are products/services optimally priced? Has technology disrupted the marketplace or disintermediated traditional channels?
Are there product/service issues? Has new competition entered the market? Is the organization easy to do business with? What is the market reputation? Any one of these issues has the potential to render the most successful sales person impotent.
One technique that can go a long way toward solving the right problem is hypothesis-based action planning.
It starts with defining as many potential root causes as possible, and then determining an approach by which hypotheses are created for the most likely candidates – and then strengthened or weakened by taking a series of “test” actions.
As confidence increases that the true root cause has been identified and that we’re on the right track, more aggressive actions and larger investments can be made. The focus is on proactive, continual learning rather than remaining committed to an initial judgment and seeing it through to the end – regardless of mounting evidence to the contrary.
One simple, but powerful, book is “Are Your Lights On? How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is,” by Donald G. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg.
It’s a quick, humorous read and it gets the key point across: take some time to diagnose what’s really going on before taking action. Otherwise, you may find that you’re solving the wrong problem … just faster!
Flawless execution to the wrong end is nothing more than a brilliant waste. Take the advice of those who’ve come before us: “measure twice – cut once”.
Contact: Matt Bochnicek is founder and CEO of Autus Actus, a growth strategy, digital transformation and analytics consultancy.
mbochnicek@autusactus.com; 651.470.3209; www.autusactus.com.
