Coaching Churches

If I could change one word in the title of this great Forbes post it would be Activity has become the enemy instead of accomplishments instead of time.  It goes all the way back to Quad III in Covey’s time matrix of everything that is urgent but not important.  My two greatest weapons in this ongoing constant new inputs war are time blocking and closing inputs so that I can stay focused on the big rocks:

“The workplace has become a carnival of doing. Everyone is in a constant state of action.  Look, over there! It’s people having a meeting to prepare for the meeting that is about a future meeting with a customer.

There is less and less time for reflection, pausing, ideation, or even good decision-making. Furthermore, this ‘always on’ mindset is affecting the manner in which we are leading people and initiatives.”

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It is amazing to me how all of the most respected people in the field of leadership are so consistently saying the same things about the most important things that all organizations need to be doing.  It really started when Steven Covey wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People followed by Jim Collins Good to Great and now every bestselling book on leadership prioritizes the same factors.

Execution is a great read by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.  They define execution as the discipline of getting things done.

They start with the number one issue of the day the personal character of the leader.  If you are not able to execute your own personal priorities then you will never be able to establish execution as a priority for your organization.

In the spirit of Good to Great they insist that the leader must never delegate their most important responsibility of getting the right people on the team.  This factor more than any other will determine if you r people can consistently move beyond creative development and project planning to actually get the job done.

The next priority is to create a culture of discipline where execution is valued.  A great insight is that we don’t think ourselves into a new way of acting, we act ourselves into a new way of thinking.  Translation, at some point in time we need to stop talking about the problem and start doing something to solve it.

Finally, after the leader has set clear goals and priorities you must evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy.  Then it is extremely important to reward the doers who are actually getting the job done and this will move execution to the top of your leadership core values.

I cannot tell you how many people I have worked with over the years that are great at getting something started but totally ineffective in finishing the task with excellence.  They get very excited in the creative planning stages of something but when it gets down to execution they lose interest and allow performance to deteriorate.

Keith Ferrazzi in his great book Never Eat Alone says that good follow up alone elevates you above 95% of your peers in every area of your life.  In his opinion it is the absolute key to success in any field.

In the area of networking he makes sure that he makes contact with any new person he meets within twelve to twenty-four hours after they have initially met.  He says why go to all the trouble of meeting new people if you’re not going to work on making them a part of your life?

This same discipline applies to phone conversations and meetings where commitments have been make for some future action.  It is extremely important to get all assignments down in writing and distribution made for all involved giving what is expected, who is responsible and when the project should be completed.

Many times great decisions have been made only to see the idea or project fail not because of poor initial planning but simply not paying attention to all the details involved in implementation.  Creativity alone can produce a lot of excitement but follow up alone is what produces sustainable excellence.

I love being in the room when there are 30,000 foot white board meetings about the future.  I also enjoy the planning phase of determining what needs to be done and how we will do it.  At the end of the day though, unless the people who are responsible for actual execution do their job its all a waste.  This HBR post is nails it:

“Most people recognize that execution is a critical skill and strive to perform it well, but they may a) underestimate how important it is to their career advancement or b) not realize that you can improve on execution without working longer hours.  On the first point, bosses place a premium on execution, which we define as the ability to achieve individual goals and objectives.”

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