CREATING VALUE THROUGH THE PURSUIT OF EXECUTION EXCELLENCE
“Vision without execution is just hallucination,” said Henry Ford some 100 years ago. Still true today, a company’s strategy is only as good as its ability to execute. Execution benefits when conscious business sensibilities are brought to daily execution and coordination of business. Value is created by helping people share a common purpose and develop creative mindsets and dynamic processes that enable both stability and adaptability in today’s complex business environment. This is “Execution Excellence.” It refers to a commitment to raise the level of productivity created during execution. It means advancing the effectiveness of how people collaborate in teams to produce desired outcomes. It’s about raising the standard by which people collaborate to execute, deliver a desired outcome, and do so with increasing levels of quality and consistency. It rests on the pillars of purpose, people and processes.
Your ability to execute is built on an infrastructure in both technology and human dimension skills that require purpose, people and processes. You deploy and manage that infrastructure as you implement real-world strategies. Deploying an execution infrastructure corresponds directly to the management of execution. Here is a quick check-list to help you evaluate your infrastructure for execution and your ability to manage it.
Does your execution infrastructure have:
A clear purpose at the business, team and individual levels.
Governance that is accessible and drives fast decision making.
People's mindsets ready for execution and with the best collaboration skills.
Streamlined processes to guide collaboration, adaptability and agility.
Does your execution management allow for:
Running 30 day sprints in continuous cycles of learning and improvement.
Ongoing process adjustment and meeting facilitation.
Coaching to collaborate at new levels of effectiveness.
Reviewing, learning and updating.
What follows is Triviam Consulting's framework for driving execution excellence. From its infrastructure to its managment, this model is composed of 5 key tasks; developing a clear and shared purpose, governance to drive efficient decision making, development of mindsets and behaviors, streamlining processes and facilitating coordinated action through the implementation of the effective execution cycle. With this framework in mind, let's review each of these tasks.
1. DEVELOPING CLEAR PURPOSE
The objective is to develop a clear and common purpose that is driven by the business’s aspirations and as a result, scales easily across multiple country and geographic borders. The project’s common purpose becomes a unique rallying point for all stakeholders regardless of location.
To develop a compelling shared purpose, teams comprised of all levels and workstreams should go through a process to explore the individual and group meaning derived from the project and their connection to company mission and vision.
Once completed, all individuals and teams involved in execution share a purpose that compels their participation and commitment. Project participants are clear on the project and their role in it. Driven by a deeper meaning, participants are inspired and motivated to focus on action.
2. GOVERNANCE
All execution requires nimble decision making in order to respond to the dynamic landscape traversed while implementing strategy. Often times, companies have the right people with the right skills ready to implement, however, little thought has been given to how decisions will be made or to the amount of decisions likely required when implementing strategy. The result is people ready to execute and take action being held back while waiting for decisions to be made. It therefore is important to establish a clear governance model for execution of strategy and communicate how decisions will be made prior to making them. Governance models benefit from having three different levels of oversight and decision making; Task-based, Business-based and Strategy-based governance.
3. PEOPLE: PUTTING DOWN THE SWORD AND PICKING UP THE MIRROR
Sharing common beliefs and mindsets regarding responsibility and learning drives collaboration and transcends local cultural norms. The objective is to align stakeholders with the same empowering mindsets and behaviors, creating a common language and expectation for how collaboration occurs throughout the implementation of a new project. A new common culture emerges that fits comfortably within larger cultural contexts.
Essential mindset shifts for execution include moving from the belief that factors outside your control determine outcomes to focusing on one's abilty to respond which empowers and redefines responsibility. From speaking and knowing to look good and belong to knowing whereof you speak but always with curiosity and and attitude of continuous learning. From rigid to agile. From the belief that our abilities are fixed to believe that our abilities are open to development and expansion and to growth. From focus on the general to focus on the details. From tracking to managing and leading. From risk is beyond our control to risks are to be quantified and managed.
Essential behaviors for execution include communication, listening, advocacy, inquiry, speaking one's core truth, negotiating, escalating and making clear and clean commitments.
Perhaps more than any other skill, communications can make or break a project. It can be the source of strong alignment and synchronization between moving parts of a complex project, or it can be the source of ambiguity, confusion, misdirection and assumptions run amuck. Strong communication skills allows for building strong rapport with work streams and teams which in turn builds deeper trust which in turn makes challenging the thinking of others and holding them accountable for commitments more effective.
Listening is another crucial behavioral skill to be developed. It allows for a deeper reading of body language, tone and implied meaning. It requires checking one’s assumptions and inferences as discussions advance so as to make sure that all parties involved understand the same thing at the same time. With greater listening skills, more information is gathered, noticed and considered. People's concerns are heard and can be responded to. Without strong listening skills, work can become superficial, resentment can build, and details get lost.
Advocacy is the skill of relating one’s belief and point of view in such a way as to reveal the logic behind their assumptions. It includes sharing what you observe that becomes the basis of your interpretation, assumptions and conclusions. This is the most effective way to allow another person to fully understand what and why you believe what you are saying. Inquiry is the mirror image of advocacy. It is the skill of knowing how to ask questions in such a way as to reveal the other person’s observations, values at play, interpretation, assumptions and conclusions.
Speaking One’s Core Truth is essential to getting to the point and focusing on what matters most. By learning to identify one’s core truth and speak from that truth, we avoid becoming defensive, sharing emotional reactions, and blaming others. Instead conversations stay focused on what matters most, the task at hand.
Throughout execution, the need to negotiate arises regularly. From negotiating timelines to agreements to work loads, negotiation skills require understanding relationships and stakeholders’ interests. However, more than communications, it requires specific skills and techniques to help people move from surface level positions to interests where common ground can be found.
Finally, execution runs on agreements and commitments. Clear agreements are the lifeblood of successful execution. It’s about clarifying who is going to do what by when. But too often, agreements and commitments are made without enough rigor and follow through. Making agreements that stick and getting the follow through needed for success, is a skill to be learned.
4. STREAMLINING PROCESSES
Execution excellence requires reviewing business structures and processes with an eye towards revealing superfluous behaviors and activities that have built up over time and may in fact be unconscious. These superfluous behaviors add complexity to decision making and collaboration reducing a team’s focus on value creating activities, compromising their effectiveness and agility.
The objective is to identify behaviors and processes that are not adding value. Once identified, they can be replaced with new mindsets, skills and processes that function together to deliver desired outcomes more effectively.
Streamlining processes includes activities such as observing meetings, reviewing resource allocation, project governance, work stream integration, and project management processes. The result of these activities is to reduce duplication and streamline processes.
In the end, all components (people, resources, processes) impacting execution have been analyzed for their ability to add value to project outcome, resulting in an updated project approach and management report that describes what gaps need to be closed in order to raise the speed and impact of execution.
5. EFFECTIVE EXECUTION CYCLE: FACILITATING COORDIATED ACTION
Effective execution requires the ongoing design of processes that maximize efficiency across multiple time zones while guiding numerous workstreams independently yet remaining fully integrated when needed. New processes must take into account the need for continual optimization and sub-optimization of different work streams depending on their role and deliverables throughout the project.
It's necessary to update processes identified when streamlining processes so as to focus action and outcomes during the effective execution cycle. This work occurs within the first 30 to 60 days of project work and may continue to be updated as data from implementation provides further clarity with regards to what works and what doesn’t work.
During the execution cycle, meetings are used to inform, define and coordinate action. As a result, the design and facilitation of meetings is at the heart of maintaining effective executiontt cycle and faciliate coordinated action. The design and facilitation of meetings is necessary to transform behavior and maximize the potential of participants to make a difference, while delivering a positive impact in business performance.
The outcome of the work performed during the execution cycle is a clear roadmap for action that guides who does what by when, as well as how multiple workstreams will work independently and together when required. These roadmaps provide the tasks to be tracked and managed throughout execution.
CONCLUSION
Execution excellence is a pursuit, not someting to be achieved. It's about raising the bar of people's ability to collaborate effectively, efficiently, and productively while feeling commitment to the purpose underlying the task. Triviam Consulting's framework for driving execution excellence goes from its infrastructure to its managment, and is composed of 5 key tasks; developing a clear and shared purpose, governance to drive efficient decision making, development of mindsets and behaviors, streamlining processes and facilitating coordinated action through the implementation of the effective execution cycle. The outcome of work on these five tasks is continuous improvement in a team's ability to exceed objectives, complete projects within or before original timelines, and come in on or below budget, all while be inspired to take on the next execution challenge. That's execution excellence.
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