The super power of high performance: inject meaning into the essentials.
If you dive into any discussion with a high performer, or high performing team, you'll notice a theme that pops up consistently. It’s a focus on the fundamentals. I’ve seen this hold true in multiple domains and it holds especially true in business.
Unfortunately, I’ve also seen otherwise-brilliant-leaders ignore or dismiss some of the fundamentals of execution. Sometimes they complicate them. Sometimes they dismiss them. These are teams I see struggle to execute. They miss targets. Their costs go up. Drama seeps in to interactions. Even if they execute, it’s often at very high cost, even if those costs are personal and hidden by the teams from the leaders.
On the other hand, when I see leaders treat some specific fundamentals as essential to the business, as something meaningful and non-negotiable part of their culture…. their teams execute and continually improve.
The data on this is remarkable. 99% of businesses hit a “valley of death” in their growth curve at some point, while 94% never become viable in the first place.
And along the way, most businesses leave alignment and focus to chance at worst, or handle it reactively at best: These fundamentals become something to deal with only when there are problems. And that’s often too late.
This article is my attempt to bring out the essentials that can accelerate your path and cut the friction. No surprise they are what we focus on with our product here at ResultMaps. That doesn’t change their importance to any business.
The Essential Practices of Execution
In business, I find the 3 essentials to be:
Clear vision
Clear priorities - identify no more than 3 near-term priorities in terms of the results you need. These are the impactful results forward that advance the team toward that vision
Strong team operating rhythms to keep things on track
Did you doze off yet?
Still here?
Good, because if you can hit these essential practices consistently, you and your teams can do just about anything. And even if it seems boring to address these, the outcomes are inspiring. So it’s worth thinking of these as meaningful and non-negotiable.
The things to know
These are non-negotiable in my view. Master them and succeed; ignore them at your peril.
Each essential enhances the other
They can be created in clear terms, in a step-by-step process, these aren’t “fuzzy woo woo” topics
Execution Essentials #1: Clarity of Vision
Be able to explain your vision, purpose, and values to the team. Keep it simple, easy to understand, and easy to make memorable.
Why bother?
When you do this, you get better decisions from everyone, more autonomy on your teams, and you see more ownership of the right outcomes by everyone. Without it, you get friction that increases over time. It’s not just me observing this - Steve Jobs has a quote I love. Paraphrased, he says a leader's #1 job is making sure there is a shared vision for everyone, and that everyone gets it.
To skip the fluff, and have a vision that gets you these benefits, and saves you the costs that you risk without it, there are a few tips.
Take time to organize a short write up of the future you see. If you need inspiration, we have real company vision statements in our library. You can also use our vision course, or anyone else’s so long as you keep it short and sweet. The longest format I’ve seen and liked is Cameron Herold’s Vivid Vision format, which gets much longer than I recommend to start out. While it’s outstanding, it takes in a lot more than these essentials, so it can be intimidating to some leaders who are just getting started.
Outline why that vision matters to you. This will plug into Simon Sinek’s research, you’ll be able to “start with why” when you convey your vision. That said, when first writing your vision, do this part as the second step - it’s much easier. All it takes is looking at the “what” you outlined in step 1, and asking yourself “why does this matter to me” - and repeating that about your answers until you’ve gone through 5 steps.
Identify the 5 behaviors most important to you and your team. More is ok, but don’t go crazy. These are your core values - but not the fluffy aspirational kind like “integrity” and “honesty”. These are the behaviors you will high five when you see them, because they matter. They’ll need to be more specific than aspirations or broad virtues. Think “go the extra mile for our customers” instead of “service”. You can learn more about what goes into this type of core value in this video. Patrick Lencioni also has a great YouTube video on Actionable core values, and Harvard Business Review article called Make your Values Mean Something.
This is a lot of information, so bundle it all up with a title. This title is your mission statement. Using a mission statement in this way makes your vision and values more accessible to your team. It’s like using the title “Star Wars Episode IV” in place of the script for Star Wars. You don’t need to read the whole script to remember the movie. You just need the title.
You’ve now been intentional providing context and meaning in a down-to-earth way for everyone in your company. If you don’t do this, it’s hard to expect people to know what decisions you need them to make in the gray areas that continually emerge.
I won’t pretend this isn’t work to create this. It’s proven worth it in time, money and frustration saved, over in over. That includes both personal experience and loads of research.
Execution Essentials #2: Ruthless Prioritization
Too many of us create a laundry list of high-impact targets when it comes time to set goals. And then fail to take the next step to get them down to the top 3. Smaller companies (startups) ought to have just 1, maybe 2.
You can’t prioritize without priorities. Having more than 3 things puts you into having a wish list or roadmap. It won’t focus you.
According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, unclear values and conflicting priorities are the number one reason strategy execution fails. In this step, and with essential number 1, we are making it as hard as possible to fail for this reason.
How exactly do we do this.
Define your top 3 (top 2 is better than top 3, top 1 is even better)
Say no to everything else.
Make them easy to measure - whether you use OKRs or another goal setting framework, this is critical. It takes more than SMART goals.
These priorities must align to the numbers you use to gauge the health of your business (your KPIs).
Revisit your alignment to these priorities daily and weekly on a rhythm (see the next section)
Embrace the discomfort of saying “no” to the things outside these priorities. This is the job when it comes to being a great leader.
Bonus tips for it making easier to say “no” “
“Park them” in a list for later. Put the things you say “no” to, or other great ideas that come up in an idea list, a “parking lot” list, or on your roadmap. You can let those ideas and opportunities “incubate for later” list. They aren’t gone, they are intentionally moved to another time.
Take pride in saying no. It is a superpower that great leaders share. Disney's Bob Iger says: "More than 3 priorities is a wish list." A favorite Jobs quote of mine is his on the importance of Apple’s ability to say “no”. Echelon Front, the team that brought us the book Extreme Ownership call this skill Prioritize and Execute. The list of great leaders who highlight and exhibit this skill this is legendary. Now it includes you.
PS: If empires like Disney and Apple, with all of their resources, find it necessary to prioritize so ruthlessly to get things done, it is worth intentionally developing this essential core skill of execution.
Execution Essentials #3: Your Operating Rhythms
The third element is your rhythm of operations. Put simply, it runs as follows
Work
Check in on progress
Solving any problems
Confirm, clarify, or adapt your next steps
As you hit each of these four steps, you refer back to your vision, and your big 3, and make sure your work and progress are visible and tracking.
What goes into creating a consistent and healthy set of operating rhythms?
Daily: communicate progress in a concise, meaningful format. What was done, what’s next? Is anything stuck? We’ve timed this, you can do it in 90 seconds. That nets out to taking 7 minutes per week. Those 7 minutes can save hours and days per week and weeks per year. More on that claim later.
Surprising sidebar: studies are tying this type of practice to an increased sense of meaning, higher levels of engagement, and creativity.
Tip: to make this work, keep it simple, and let people make the updates asynchronously without a meeting.
Weekly: check in on progress as a team toward your priorities. Make decisions based on your vision and values (number 1) and solve problems together. You can then confirm, clarify, or adapt your next steps. Whether you are running one project, a team, or a team of teams, this process is golden. Again it can be done asynchronously. This one is very useful when done together.
Tips for your weekly sync + prioritization:
Keep it on a schedule so you don’t waste time.
Open the meeting with a 15 minute-max review of your key numbers for the business, of your big 3, and the progress toward them. This keeps things focused on what matters.
Limit debate, philosophizing, or soapboxing, and focus on decisions
Rate the meeting on a 1-5 or 1-10 scale so you can improve it next time around.
Celebrate the fact you got this weekly rhythm done.
“Make sure your weekly answers these questions:
1. How are we tracking our numbers
2. How are we tracking our goals
3. Did we get our commitments delivered last week
4. What issues could stop us, and how do we solve them?
5. What commitments will advance us toward the first 2 items above in the week ahead? ”
The “Intermediate” rhythm (quarterly, or six weeks, or monthly): Between your weekly and yearly check-ins, review how things have gone on a schedule of no less frequently than every 3 months, but no more frequently than monthly. Established businesses that are not fast-paced will use a quarterly rhythm here. Fast-paced businesses go monthly. I’ve seen many people use a six-week rhythm that is just between.
Important: Pick one rhythm and stick to it, for example, don’t go back and froth between monthly/six weeks. It’s ok to refine the period once or twice, however trust equals time + consistency, so it’s important to build up your consistency over time to get and keep your team engaged.
Set your intermediate targets each period (again, 3 at most). These will be the 3 things that advance your big 3 for the year during the period in question.
You can follow a process similar to the weekly, though from a slightly more “macro” level. Look at the trends and numbers from the month or period. Put another way, for these “Intermediates”, you can ask and answer some of the same questions as in the weekly, extended to the period, with a summary of what has been learned.
Tips:
Again, keep the schedule on the clock. Schedule for the same day of the period, same time. Use an agenda during the meeting.
Open the meeting with a review of your vision and progress toward your big 3.
Rate the meeting at the end.
Celebrate it as a win when you got it done. This is the gig.
“Here are some of the additional questions to add to this intermediate meeting:
“What beliefs did we have at the beginning of the year?”
“Are those beliefs still tracking”
“If we are off track, if beliefs aren’t tracking … where do we need to adjust to refocus?”
”What can we stop/start/continue in order to improve our execution based on our learning?””
Annually: Check-in with your vision annually. When you do it alongside these other rhythms, it becomes much more meaningful. Instead of a long session that defines goals that are lost by March, you earn the right to ask bigger questions about direction - because now you have confidence in your ability to execute.
“The questions to ask in this context:
- How did we do on our numbers and goals?
- What did we learn? (There are several frameworks we can use).
- What problems are slowing us down?
- Where are we now relative to our vision (the clarity)
- What’s happening in the market?
- What’s next?”
There are many good strategic frameworks that get applied to annual planning session. My view is, they don’t matter half as much as your ability to execute throughout the year. If you have the organizational muscles to get stuff done effectively, and to adjust course the way the other components of this rhythm allow you to, you can execute on any strategy. If you don’t have these operational rhythms in place, your strategy will stay in the realm of dreams and ideas.
Execution is the essential in strategy execution
Too often leaders put energy into annual off-sites dreaming big, then let short-term execution slide by dismissing the essentials.
Ultimately, allowing execution to slide undercuts team belief, morale, and engagement. Avoiding these essentials means your team is likely not clear on your direction and not giving you their inspired best. That means even if you inject 1000 HR or warm fuzzy “best practices” you won’t develop a strong culture of execution, and you won’t have a good rhythm of execution.
While the daily, weekly, and intermediate rhythms can be framed as extra work, or seem boring, the reality I’ve seen is that when done right, they save huge amounts of time for everyone, while accelerating the path to far better results.
Embrace the essential rhythms of execution, and things get way more fun.
PS if you want to get a system that makes it easy and automatic to get these essentials in place to build a culture of relentless execution, start a free trial of ResultMaps.
We are also launching a free course on the rhythm of execution so sign up to join the waitlist.