“It’s better to have grade-B strategy and grade-A execution than the other way around.”
Michael Porter

Over the years, I have observed that those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people who follow-through who excel.
Mary Kay Ash

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In my introductory post, 12 Vital signs of Organizational Health, I listed the 12 signs.  Here is sign #11:

A healthy organization excels at execution.

This is the question.  Get ready for it.

Do you deliver on what you promise?

Do you deliver on what you intend to deliver?
With excellence, on schedule, in a full customer and fellow-worker pleasing kind of way?
In other words, do you execute?  Do you turn your plan into genuinely satisfying reality?

Do you remember when Apple rolled out its new map apps?  Disaster!  And it wasn’t just that the maps app was a disaster.  It was that Apple had failed to execute.  And that violated our expectations about Apple.

Warning – don’t ever violate people’s expectations.  Surpass them – good!  Violate them – very, very bad…

I order from Amazon all the time.  Nearly every time that I order, I get my stuff quickly.  (Yes, I’ve paid for Amazon Prime).  In fact, Amazon is so good that I am disappointed when something does not go right.  At this moment, I am waiting for a used book to arrive, bought through the Amazon web site.  From one of the “outside party” sellers.  It is not yet “late,” but it is getting close.  I am so accustomed to Amazon delivering on time, usually “earlier than promised,” that this is almost maddening.

But, note what I am saying – I have full confidence in Amazon.  And if it arrives actually later than the promised date I will leave a comment saying “this seller did not execute.”  And the next purchaser will be a little more “beware.”

But, I cut Amazon plenty of slack.  Because they almost never let me down.  This is not their norm.  Execution done right is their norm.

Being let down more than once (or, the “first time” you do business together), can be a real reputation and business killer.

I remember the time I bought a particular new car.  It was my first purchase of that particular brand.  I researched in the magazines (back before the days of the internet).  The sales person told me all the wonderful things about this particular car.

I hated it.  It did not deliver on its promise.  I could not wait to get rid of the car – (but, had to wait, about three years).

And I have never bought that brand again – and never will.  Yes, their current cars are probably much better.  But I’m scarred, too suspicious…  They didn’t execute, and lost a customer over it.  The lesson:  a first interaction with a company/product/service that goes bad is very difficult to overcome.

So, what is execution?  From Merriam-Webster:

to carry out fully; to put completely into effect.

In other words:

This is what I am telling you I will do…
I did exactly that (or more than that – never less than that), to your full satisfaction, on the schedule I promised.

This is execution.  And, the larger your organization, the more critical it is that every piece of the organization, every “link in the chain,” executes fully, on schedule, to make the final outcome one that fulfills the promise.

“The book” on execution is the book that introduced the subject in an in-depth way to me as a reader:  Execution:  The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.  Here are some key excerpts:

No company can deliver on its commitments or adapt well to change unless all leaders practice the discipline of execution at all levels.  Execution has to be a part of a company’s strategy and its goals.  It is the missing link between aspirations and results.  As such, it is a major – indeed the major – job of a business leader.  If you don’t know how to execute, the whole of your effort as a leader will always be less than the sum of its parts.
In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it.
The leader who executes assembles an architecture of execution.   He puts in place a culture and processes for executing, promoting people who get things done more quickly and giving them greater rewards.
Organizations don’t execute unless the right people, individually and collectively, focus on the right details at the right time.
Every great leader has had an instinct for execution.

So, if you make promises, if you make plans, and you do not deliver on that plan – you failed to execute.,  And, to put it mildly, if you fail to execute, that’s the ball game.  In fact, that is the very word used to describe a lost ball game.  Frequently, when a football player is interviewed after a loss, that player will say:  “we had a great plan.  But we failed to execute.”

But we failed to execute.  That’s a killer.  A failure to execute is a failure to do business successfully.  It is pretty hard – make that impossible — to be a healthy organization if your organization fails the execution test.  Vital sign #11 is indeed a vital vital sign:  A healthy organization excels at execution.

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For further reading – there are more recent books on execution than the one I quoted from above.   At our First Friday Book Synopsis, Karl Krayer presented a synopsis of The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling.  I presented the book Six Disciplines Execution Revolution:  Solving the One Business Problem that Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier by Gary Harpst.  Here’s a little from the Harpst book:

Most business leaders I know started their business journey with visions of excellence in their head and heart but frequently get so absorbed by the day-to-day challenges of their business that they never really figure out what excellence means for them…. 

• Strategy:  choosing what promises to make to all stakeholders and a roadmap for delivering on those promises.
• Execution:  getting there, while overcoming unending surprises.

• OR: 

STRATEGY:  DECIDING WHAT TO DO
EXECUTION:  GETTING IT DONE.

• “Of the two, execution is far more difficult to achieve.”

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You can purchase my synopses of Execution and Six Disciplines Execution Revolution (and Karl Krayer’s synopsis of The 4 Disciplines of Execution) at our companion web site.  Each synopsis comes with a multi-page comprehensive handout, and the audio of our presentations from the First Friday Book Synopsis.  You can order the synopses from: 15minutebusinessbooks.com.