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