Growth tips 30 seconds to business enlightenment.

Are you taking the right action every week?

07-Jul-2011

Let us imagine that you have just updated your strategic plan at the end of the quarter, and are about to dive into your next 90 day sprint with clear strategic priorities to be implemented in your company by the end of the coming quarter.

While you may have a desire to accomplish many things, we have learned time and time again that “less is more” when it comes to strategy execution.  Ideally, you choose no more than 3 strategic priorities for the quarter.  It is better to do less and do it well, than to take on too many things and spread yourselves too thin.  Focus on less to achieve more.  

As a leader, your aim is for everyone in your team to finish the quarter with a sense of satisfaction and achievement.  You want everyone being able to say “We nailed our key milestones” - rather than having a whole lot of projects still up in the air, with your people still grinding away day after day, and never feeling the thrill of victory.  You want the team to be able to pop the cork and celebrate their achievements at the end of every quarter, not feel like failures.

Even if you have carefully chosen a limited number of projects to focus on, the key to strategy execution success is to ensure your people are taking the right action each and every week than will ensure each of their individual projects are completed on time by their due dates.  

Everyone has a huge “to do” list of things they could be doing – but what is the “1 thing”?  What is the 1 tangible bite sized action they can complete this week that will move each project forward?  If they can just get that 1 thing done – that is the secret to strategic execution.  Anything else they may accomplish during the week is a bonus – but everyone must know what their 1 thing is relating to each project.  In many cases this also means being able to say “No” to anything else that comes up, and protecting your people from distractions.   

Strategy execution is not about working hard, or being busy.  It is about everyone taking the right action - each and every week – and nailing that 1 thing.

Leaders must follow up at every weekly meeting and hold each of their people firmly accountable, “Did you complete what you said you were going to do last week to move your project forward?”  Business Execution Software makes this easy.   

Leaders must encourage, motivate and reward those people who take the right actions and complete them every week.

If you let one person off the hook, it lowers the performance bar for everyone else – it means people are allowed to break their promises to you.  It can also mean that entire projects get held up by 1 person who does not play their part.  The whole team experiences a preventable failure because you did not hold people accountable.  If you let someone hold the team back, the failure is yours to own.  You did not do your job.  When you are the leader, you only win when your team wins.

What are you going to do differently to make sure you and your team win this quarter?

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