An old client of Ideasphere Partners, and now a dear friend, asked me a couple of months back to spend a day with an executive team reviewing a project. It was one that had gone horribly wrong in a small company he owns in his semi-retirement from executive life. He was frustrated! It was an important project with his full support, well planned , with good objectives, and managed by one of his young “Ivy league educated” stars. A project “guaranteed” to succeed, that not only failed; it did so in a spectacular way. It was something no one saw coming until it was too late. After we worked through the project history, a pattern emerged that made it, in hindsight, obvious it was doomed to fail from the beginning.
“What went wrong in our project planning?” was the question my friend asked and the one got me started with this blog about a month ago (never enough time to write for fun these days). As we worked through their project, and I thought more about projects I have seen fail over the years, including some of my own, the more interesting question became “why do perfect plans many times produce perfect failures?”. So here it goes:
There was a time when I thought if everyone focused on doing what they were supposed to do or needed to be done, did it the right way, following a clean, orderly, logical, and rational process or project plan, we could deploy perfect solutions to most problems. The tools I acquired and carried in my head through my years of management training Kaizen, Six Sigma, Lean, Theory of Constraints, Balanced Score Cards, etc., etc. could save the day, every day. But I found it doesn’t work that way. Smart does not always win the race. Now that I am older and, hopefully, wiser I appreciate more a mentor of mine who used to remind me “there are many smart young people, but there aren’t any wise young people.”
Wise and smart is what wins the race. You see, when using smart Vulcanian logic, there are always clear answers to the problems we face. In the perfect world, what “should” be done or “should” have happened is as obvious as the Greek nose on my face. But Vulcans are imaginary, and what “should” happen so rarely materializes in the real world that I have now replaced “should” with “could” when I work on plans and strategies.
I now know: sometimes it is the plan; but most of the times it’s the execution. You see, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker: ”All strategies and plans have to eventually degenerate into work.” And work happens in the real world where what “should” be done rarely plays out, and unintended consequences rule the day. Where, power corrupts and people play turf games. A world where self interest corrodes the integrity of assessments and relentless objectivity is replaced with fake reality and happy talk. In the real world, randomness determines as many outcomes as deliberate execution, and Black Swans fly above waiting to land. And so it goes…
But we are the operators, and failure is not an path of choice. When the arrows are flying, we choose to “fight in the shade.”
So what do we do? How do we ensure success has better, or at least as good, odds than “chance.”. How do we get the edge in the real world?
Well, I think there is only one way to get the edge and it comes from managing execution in real time. I’ll take a simple plan lead by, and staffed with, competent operators who can adapt in real time, over a perfect plan led by a “perfect” executive who can only do what the plan says.
Execution is about a crystal clear message about the strategy and the end game objectives, and the unquestionable expectation of top notch operational performance. It is about the drive towards the upper end of the bell curve rather than the mediocrity in the middle.
Execution is about the Yin and Yang of focusing both on the Results and the Process; On Speed and Pacing; Accountability for delivering results and Flexibility around artificial deadlines.
Execution is about having a “No Starving Monkeys” philosophy. Just like monkeys that need to be fed till they are full or they turn nasty and mean, projects can either be fully funded or not. No half ways or there will be many monkeys all starving and biting each other. Define the metrics of performance, identify and assign the resources required and necessary to meet the goal (feed the monkey), and forget about the next level of priorities until you are done (Shoot the monkey or more humanely put in suspended animation).
Execution is like managing a race track. You let too many cars on the track, and there will be more collisions and the whole track will run slower. You have too few cars and the fastest car will win every time, but the track won’t break any records. And even if you have the right cars on the track, you need a tough pit boss to make sure cars are re-fueled and tires changed quickly and the rules are followed.
Execution is about rewarding team performance as well as individual. In the race track, one driver can feel good about a personal best run, but it does not get a win.
And the most important thing about execution is that it is not a binary state but rather a polarity to managed. But that’s a blog for another time.
