Getting Things Done – As A Discipline, A Way of Life

Yes, But Can You Deliver?

If not an explicit question, certainly an implicit one, every executive wants to know, when all is said and done – can you deliver? Can I rely on you to produce specific, measurable, desired results, in time – and can you do that consistently and reliably. And, just to raise the bar, can you train and lead people to do the same?

Execution is what translates a desire or ambition to achieve something into desired results. Speaking a desire or ambition to achieve something without execution and results is wind-bagging – empty noise, designed more to impress in the moment than to cause something to happen in the future.

Making things happen is a leader's most important job. Yet few who aspire to leadership have rigorous, replicable and reliable practices to cause things to happen. And, even fewer executives appreciate what it takes to transform the culture of their organizations so as to replace the established thinking and actions with the kind of thinking and actions that will be needed to make audacious goals real.

Talk Is Cheap – Or Is It We Cheapen Talk?

My view is we cheapen talk. We cheapen it by speaking of bold visions, grand plans, inspiring values and then we don't act consistently with that speaking. This way of being/behaving, lacks integrity. It is inauthenticity at its most blatant. It is the source of much of the lethargy and despondency in most organizations. It explains why so many people are resigned. Why they listen to almost every leaders plans with skepticism. 

We need to be vigilant so as to notice when our own speaking and actions are misaligned. When we see that happening one or the other needs to change. Either we change our speaking to match our actions or we change our actions to match our speaking.

Most executives, when confronted with enterprise wide skepticism, lethargy and low morale are surprised, upset even. They blame employees as if they are the source of the condition rather than the effect of a condition. 

My coaching of leaders is to have the perspective that they cause what is showing up in the organization. I ask them to say, and own: What is showing up in my company, or division or team, is a direct function of, or expression of my leadership – as if I directly asked for it. Because, implicitly you did ask for it.

Execution Is A Process To Cause Action That Produces Desired Results

Ten Basic Steps

1. Make a Declaration with a this shall be intentionality expressed in the speaking – a declaration with, implicit in the speaking and way of being, we will do everything we know how to do so that our intentions are made real. It is the executive's version of Martin Luther King's I have a dream or John F. Kennedy's We Choose to Go to the Moon. It is clear, unequivocal, bold and audacious - a BHAG.
2. Create a Structure to Allow For the Fulfillment of the Declaration. Without a process or structure to keep our (declarative) speaking about our intentions in existence, it is unlikely they will be realized. If we don't have a process to translate our speaking into action and outcomes, it will get lost in the mass of speaking that goes on every day. It will be forgotten.                                                                              
3. Create Milestones Back From The Future.  Plot milestones back from the future end state - the goals and objectives you are accountable to produce - with specific measurable results to be produced at specific points in time.
4. Forecast – Extend The Past. Forecast the probable outcomes, continuing business-as-usual, with best case, most likely case and worst case scenarios. The difference between to declaration, the BHAG and the forecast is the gap to be closed: This gap defines the space for generating, invention and discovering. It shows clearly the scale of the breakthroughs that need to occur for the declarations of BHAG's to be made real.
5. Build From The Existing Base. Given the results that need to be produced what needs to be stopped, what needs to be started, what needs to be continued, and what needs to be done differently. 
6. Create Clear Accountabilities. Broadcast them so there is no ambiguity who is accountable to whom for what outcomes by when. 
7. Know Your Actual ResultsAnd as close to real time as possible. Have milestones, forecasts and actual results on visible display shaping day-by-day actions. Failing to deliver on the results we are accountable for is not a cause for disciple or complaint. However: Not knowing whether one is succeeding or failing is a cause for discipline; and not flagging that failure is a probability given the current trajectory (outlook) is cause for disciple.
8. Establish and Align on a Set of Practices. Rigorously follow processes. Surface and deal with setbacks and breakdowns and/or failures to meet milestones or fulfill on an accountability so they can be handled and a breakthrough produced. Build on what works, correct what doesn't and put in place what's missing by doing after action reviews.
9. Speak So As To Cause Action and Desired Outcomes. Make requests, make promises – without requests and promises, have the point of view nothing will happen.
10. Pay Attention to What's Working. Look for every and any sign of things working. Acknowledge people for everything they do that works. Look for excuses to celebrate, to keep enthusiasm and morale high.

Resources

Books: 

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan and Charles Burke.
• Know How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don't by Ram Charan. 

Quotes

• Wherever you find something getting done, you find a monomaniac with a mission. Peter Drucker
• The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw, Maximums for Revolutionists
• It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement, and at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly. Theodore Roosevelt
• Accountability is taking responsibility before the fact, rather than after the fact. It is taking a stand, and standing by it. When those who are accountable are right, they take the credit. When they are wrong, they take the heat. It's a fair exchange. Accountability is a way of working. Those who practice it have an unspoken respect for each other. And a visible disdain for the absentminded apologizers, mumbling excuse-makers, and trembling fence-sitters who run from integrity as if it were the plague. Shearson/Lehman Brothers

   

Meetings, Meetings, Please, Not Another Meeting

How Can I Get My Work Done With All These Meetings

The dominant complaint in most organizations is that too much time is spent in meetings. Followed by, most meetings are a waste of time. This widespread complaint is a wonderful opportunity for leadership, for someone to step in, or step up, and make a contribution by transforming meeting effectiveness. And it can be anyone who participates in meetings. It doesn't have to be the boss or the person who called the meeting.

If meetings are to be productive - that is forward the vision, strategy and values of the organization - then the people who want to demonstrate leadership need to think about the design purpose of each and every meeting then follow some rules and guidelines to make them work.

Given virtually everyone in an organization attends meetings, putting the key elements of attitude and behavior that leaders want to see in the organization's day-to-day functioning into the design of meetings will go a long way towards transforming the culture of the organization.

Meetings are fundamental to the design of organizations. Transform the design of meetings and that will contribute to transforming the organization. Not only will productivity be improved, so will morale, relationships and the general vitality of the organization.

Anyone who aspires to be a leader can be seen as a leader by just going about their day-to-day business participating in meetings with colleagues, whether one-on-one or in larger groups. Leaders can change meeting interactions and outputs by being aware of what's going on, and intervening with a few questions and requests that can make meetings contribute to transforming work-life instead of be the bane of work-life.

Some Fundamentals of Meetings That Work

The amazing thing is that most people know what contributes to meetings that don't work. Everyone I have spoken to about the huge drain on time and energy that results from unproductive meetings can list off in a heartbeat what needs to change. The problem is that many people think if they can't change everything about unproductive meetings then it is not worth the energy to change anything.

Here Are Some Things We all Know

1. If we don't have a purpose and intended outcome the meeting will waste time, effort and energy. So don't lead a meeting or participate in a meeting until that is clear. If it is not clear ask.
2. The purpose and intended outcome needs to be specific, measurable and in time – beware of those jargon laced gobbledygook statements that nobody understands. If you don't understand ask, that's what leaders do.
3. When we are intentional stuff happens. If you are going to be in a meeting be intentional – this is the outcome I want, less than that will not be acceptable. 
4. Are the right people in the room to accomplish the intended outcome? If not reschedule.
5. When you are a participant in somebody else’s meeting, and you get clear that participating does not forward your accountabilities. At that point you should politely excuse yourself and leave.

During the Meeting, Manage Conversations With Rigor

When we boil down the job of leading and managing and examine what is really going on, it soon becomes clear that all people are doing is having conversations with each other, a constant back and forth. Really effective leaders and managers know how to manage this back and forth, this constant network of conversations. For example:

1. If you are in a conversation for information sharing, then do nothing but share information.
2. If you are in a conversation for possibility, then do nothing but create possibility until you have enough to work with – so as to decide on the available opportunities to act on. Stop all conversations for "I don't agree", "It can't be done", "We tried that it didn't work", "How are we going to do that"...
3. If you are in a conversation for action, then listen for promising – who is going to do what by when so as to produce X desired outcomes. If a meeting ends without promises for action and outcomes, in all likelihood it was an unproductive meeting.

Watch Out For The Ways People Can and Do Derail Meetings

Consciously of unconsciously people derail meetings, which means that the intended outcome is not produced. Here are some derailers you will recognize:  

1. Speaking equivocally when action is called for – practice identifying uncommitted speaking in the many forms it shows up and simple ask for specificity
2. Defending the past with reasons, explanations, opinions, theories, beliefs, justifications, and so on, rather than speaking for the future to which the leadership of organization is committed, and which each meeting needs to be forwarding.
3. Being attached to interpretations ungrounded in facts so that the conversations devolve into defending differing points of view rather than facing and dealing with facts.

Keep The Meeting on Purpose

ANYONE can keep a meeting on purpose simply by pointing out when it strays and making a request that we return to the conversation at hand.

If the meeting is moving too slowly, or is getting off purpose call a time-out and redirect the meeting.

To ensure that relevant off purpose topics are noted, use some parking-lot mechanism to keep these topics in existence. Just prior to the wrap-up of the meeting you as leader, and the participants, can decide how they should be dealt with – if at all.

And remember, it is possible to make a difference, produce great results and have fun, enjoy the interactions with colleagues, and be satisfied with a job well done.