Do you know how to juggle? Can you juggle three objects? Five? How about with
a partner? And what does this have to do with execution?
Juggling itself is not a very complex activity, until you start juggling more
objects or attempt to juggle with a partner! It does however, provide a good
example of how you can improve your company’s ability to execute.
Your business is somewhat of a juggling act, the more balls, pins, hats, fire
sticks, and people you try to add, the more complex it gets. The more
initiatives, projects, people, and customers you add to your business the
more complex it becomes. So how do you improve your ability to execute your
business strategies or initiatives as the business itself becomes more
complex?
Through our research on successful growing companies and years of experience
improving an organization's abilities to execute, we’ve learned that
successful companies have a greater ability to execute their strategies and
initiatives due to three basic practices: They have greater focus,
alignment and discipline than their counterparts.
Since we try to keep each Growth Advisor short and brief, I’ll explain
the first practice, focus, this month, and the other two in future
newsletters.
Focus: Focusing on a limited number of initiatives, while limiting
distractions from the many other opportunities that present themselves,
allows companies to complete initiatives better and more quickly. Often
companies create too many initiatives to complete which in turn fragments the
resources that are being used to accomplish these initiatives. There is
actually empirical evidence in the product development world proving that
product development teams complete three projects more quickly and with
better results by completing one project at a time rather than attempting to
complete all three at once. This would be like trying to learn to juggle
three different objects at the same time rather than perfecting one object
before moving on to another.
How often in your company do you attempt to accomplish too many initiatives
at once while completing none on time or as well as expected? Many companies
start a new year with grandiose visions of growth through multifaceted
initiatives then, by the end of the second quarter, it becomes apparent that
‘things didn’t go as planned” and the company must re-evaluate or juggle
initiatives. Few initiatives are completed at this point.
We worked with one company that had nearly fourteen strategic initiatives for
the year. Each initiative also had five or six supporting tactical initiatives
which drove the total initiative count to over seventy! The company was
typical of many entrepreneurial organizations in that they started the year
off with great enthusiasm but became ‘distracted’ with running the business
and chasing other ‘opportunities’ that came along and really didn’t complete
many of the initiatives. The CEO believed he needed better strategies when in
fact he just needed fewer initiatives. We worked with their leadership team
to develop and define four strategic initiatives and only two to three
tactical initiatives, which could be accomplished with their existing
resources. By design, these initiatives were to be completed before the end
of the year knowing that once these were done we could add others – but not
until then! The company has successfully completed many of these current
initiatives simply because they were focused on completing a few compared to
being stretched across many.
How focused is your business? Do you have a limited number of initiatives or
too many? Are the initiatives specifically defined? Are you trying to juggle
too many objects at once? Here's a simple exercise. Ask each member of your
leadership team to list the top five initiatives for the company. Were they
unanimous? If not, why? What is this costing your company?
Providing focus has allowed companies to complete more initiatives in a
shorter period of time and therefore beat the competition and grow. Focus improves
a company’s ability to execute.
In the next issue of the Growth Advisor we’ll discuss how the alignment
of your strategies improves your ability to execute.
To learn about our Execution Evaluation click the link below.
