Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done

A discipline is a branch of knowledge. A system is a set of principles or procedures in which something is done. A process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a specific end. In the context of execution, it is a branch of knowledge about how to get things done through a set of principles that follows a series of steps to achieve success in an organization. Execution is a discipline and system that leaders should be well familiar with. As described in the book, many organizations have failed to reach their goals and are ultimately destroyed because they do not know how to execute effectively. It doesn’t matter if they are implementing a high-level strategy if they are not executing it efficiently. Execution is the key to success once you learn how to bridge the gap between what your company wants to achieve and the actual results that your company is able to deliver. Through analyzing this gap, you can take the knowledge of what is missing between the strategy and the actual results and use it towards making significant improvements on your next project.

In order for a leader to execute well, they have to first understand the seven essential behaviors of a leader. This is the first building block in the system of execution. The seven essential behaviors are: knowing your people and business, insisting on realism, setting clear goals and priorities, following through, rewarding the doers, expanding people’s capabilities, and knowing yourself . Knowing your people and business means you as the leader need to be actively present and engaged in the day-to-day realities of your organization. Often times, leaders get swamped in reports from their staff that they become out of touch with their business and lose personal connection with their people. The reports they get are usually filtered because it is second-hand information. They need to be where the action is and get the information first hand in order to make more effective decisions. By showing face and actively engaging in the business, you are demonstrating to your people that you care for them and it will help to personalize the mission you are asking them to perform. When I first started working at the gym, there were many times when my boss would initiate a change in procedure which he believed to be more effective. I personally thought the new procedure was more tedious than it originally was and would be confused on why he would change it that way. Knowing what I do now, I understand why he thought the new procedure would be easier if he wasn’t actively engaged in the day-to-day activities of the job. Between my boss and I, we were looking at the same situation from two different perspectives and what needed to happen was for him to understand why the new procedure is actually more work than he believed. Through actively engaging with us and understanding our daily routines and interactions with customers, he would be able to more effectively make decisions to help us run our operations more smoothly when working in the front lines. Just by applying one of the principles of execution, we can greatly improve our strategy process.

Insisting on realism is the next behavior and it means that you need to embrace the truth and reality of what your organization is capable of, whether it’s good or bad. That means you need to be real with yourself and your people, even when it’s acknowledging your weaknesses. Setting clear goals and priorities means having focus on a few clear goals that are reasonably achievable. You need to really consider what you are realistically able to achieve and set goals based on that so you can set yourself up for success. Don’t set too many goals and priorities or you will lose focus on what is really important to concentrate on. In recreation therapy, it is important to have a few clear goals and objectives when planning interventions for your clients. This way it explains to your clients, and emphasizes to you, what our main foci are in what we are trying to achieve through the intervention. We also like to set treatment goals which lead up to our long-term goals for the client. Treatment goals are like stepping stones or milestones and we want to make sure they are all reasonably achievable when they are set so we can help them along gradually to achieve their long-term goals.

Following through is the fourth essential behavior. This behavior is the major cause of poor execution because many leaders fail to be able to follow through. Examples of this include having meetings about agreed upon ideas but having no clear conclusions about what to do next, or when plans and strategies have been tabled but are never returned to. Leaders should not be talking about plans if they aren’t going to be taking them seriously and following through with actions. My boss at the gym has been guilty of this in the past because there have been many times when he comes up with an idea and we put in the work to try and put the idea in effect and he either forgets about the plan, something more important comes up, or he decides it’s no longer a good idea. Now he is making more of an effort in following through with his ideas when plans have already been initiated, and communicating more with us on our opinions before starting any new plans that might end up forgotten or unfinished. Rewarding the doers means giving rewards, promotions, and respect to the right people. The right people are the people who demonstrate that they can meet our standards of performance. Businesses that don’t execute tend to reward or promote the people who don’t know how to get things done. We’ve all witnessed people who get promoted when we feel they aren’t as deserving of the reward. For instance, the boss might feel more comfortable giving a raise to a long-time employee who might not be performing as well compared to the employee that has only been with the company for a year but has been achieving results. Through rewarding the right people, you are demonstrating to your company that if they want to be rewarded, they need to be able to perform.

Expanding people’s capabilities means being able to teach. The difference between a leader that executes and a leader that doesn’t is that one is able to teach people how to get things done while the other just gives orders out to people. You have to have patience in explaining what and how something needs to get done rather than just telling someone to just get it done. Knowing yourself is the last essential behavior and it is broken up into four parts: authenticity, self-awareness, self-mastery, and humility. Authenticity means that you are the same person on the inside as you are on the outside to everyone. In movies we see the bad guy that pretends to be the good guy on the outside. We all know that sooner or later, people start to notice that he’s actually the bad guy because genuine and authentic people are actually easy to spot. We notice when there is a disconnect between who you appear to be and what you say and do. Self-awareness is being able to learn from both your mistakes and successes which allows for you to grow. You have to be aware of your decisions and actions and learn from them as you continue to move forward. Self-mastery leads to true, authentic, and positive self-confidence. When you have it, you are able to know yourself so well that you can handle taking risks or encountering a problem without complaining, or feeling victimized, and just fix it and get it done. Having humility means being able to listen and contain your ego. You are able to admit when you have a problem, made a mistake, or don’t know what to do. You don’t allow for your pride to get in the way of doing what you need to do to get the results you desire. You just admit that you made a mistake, learn from them, and move on to apply what you learned to your next experience. In recreation therapy, you can’t let your ego into your therapy because if you do, it’s not your life that is impacted, but the life of your client. You have to learn to set your pride aside and listen to what your client has to say before you plan their interventions around their wants and needs. These are the seven essential behaviors that leaders must have in order to be able to execute. This leads us to the next building block of execution.

Cultural change within an organization is the next building block of execution. It is important for execution to be at the core of an organization’s culture because through changing the behaviors of the people in the business, they are having a direct impact on the outcomes of the business. The people need to see the correlation between their beliefs and behaviors within the company, and the results produced, before they can understand how important their business culture is. All employees must be able to understand the importance of having discipline of execution as the norm in their culture. When a leader is able to demonstrate the discipline of execution, only then can they begin to try to incorporate it into the core part of their organization’s culture. It is their job to encourage and promote execution because in order to change the culture of the company, you have to first start by changing the behavior of its leader.

The third building block of execution is making sure you have the right people in the right place. This job is not a task that can be delegated to others. The leader should be the one responsible in making sure the right people are selected for the job. This is an important job that leaders must focus strongly on because you want to select the people who are good at getting thing done and have the right attitude and mindset. It’s a long and tedious process of weeding people out and getting to know the person behind their resume. There will come a time when you will have to choose between someone that is highly intellectual and came from a prestigious institution, but is just floating along, and an individual that might not be as intelligent and didn’t come from an elite institution, but they have the drive and determination to win and succeed. When you have to make this decision, always choose the more determined person. The hard skills of the job can always be taught to an individual, but it’s the soft skills that is hard to teach that is important towards the success of the organization. You can’t teach someone to have the drive and determination to succeed in the company. They have to genuinely want it. Through painstakingly selecting the people you want to hire, you will have an organization full of talented people that will eventually be promoted within the company and they will in turn continue to hire talented people in the future.

Now that we understand the three building blocks of execution, we must finally learn the three processes that make up the core of execution: The people process, the strategy process, and the operations process. Because the people are at the core of any business, it is important to make sure the right people are able to understand how the strategies are supposed to be implemented and turn them into an operational reality. How the right people are determined is by assessing all of the staff through their ability to quickly and efficiently reach their milestones that we assign them. Although this puts attention to the individuals underperforming, we can now either assign them to a new role, teach them and re-evaluate them, or eliminate them. It is important to identify the underperformers early on so that we can try to help them to improve, or if necessary, eliminate them before they get high enough in the organization that they can do considerable damage, or quite possibly destroy it. The strategy process is the action plan of determining where the organization is heading and planning on how to get there. It is important to keep the key concepts and actions of the plan to six or less points in order to better understand and implement the strategy. Leaders need to understand what needs to be done to get the results they want, but they must first define and understand the critical issue that is the driving force of the strategy in order for the action plan to be effective. Finally, the operations process is the road map that is followed to get to the end goal. It breaks up the journey into realistic short-term target goals that everyone must work together to get through. Synchronization between the leader and everyone responsible for constructing the operations process is critical in execution because everyone should have a common understanding of who is responsible for what tasks in order to execute the strategy effectively to reach the target goals. Execution is being able to link the three processes of choosing the right people for the job, setting the strategic direction, and coordinating and defining the operation. 

References

1. Bossidy, L., & Charan, R. (2002). Execution: the discipline of getting things done. Manhattan, NY: Crown Pub. Group.
2. Oxford. (n.d.). Discipline. Lexico. Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/discipline
3. Oxford. (n.d.). Process. Lexico. Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/process
4. Oxford. (n.d.). System. Lexico. Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/system