It’s Your Business
Author: Terry Greenhut, Business Editor
Subject Matter: Management
Issue: Executing your plans
People say knowledge is power, but it absolutely isn’t. What you do with that knowledge is what’s really important and powerful. Lots of folks have great ideas for inventions or starting businesses, but the vast majority never act on them, or if they do it’s in some half-baked manner that never brings the results they envisioned. It’s one thing to have a great idea; it’s quite another to see it through to its ultimate conclusion.
One example is that despite the $60-billion diet and fitness industry in the United States and the continuous complaining people do about their lack of fitness, 65% of Americans are overweight or obese. The fact is, most people know how to get in shape with or without spending a fortune on diets and fitness equipment. All they have to do is eat better and exercise more; they just don’t do it. So it isn’t that they lack the knowledge; they just don’t want to suffer the pain of execution.
You know that “Big Important Thing” you want (and maybe desperately need) to do? Maybe it’s remodeling the shop, putting together a dynamite marketing program, writing a book, saving for retirement or finally building the dream home you’ve talked about for years. Ever wondered why you can’t seem to just get it done? Your excuse might be that you don’t know enough to make it happen. That’s nonsense. With all the information available through so many sources today, if you really wanted to know you could find out fairly easily. The failure to meet your goals has nothing to do with what you do or don’t know and everything to do with how strong your desire is and how well you design and execute your plan. You can be smart and have access to lots of information and great ideas; you can be well connected, work hard and have lots of natural talent, but in the end you have to just pull up your boot straps and do it or you have nothing to show for all that great thinking.
“Execution is the single greatest differentiator between great lives and mediocre ones.”
Did you ever suffer from insomnia and stay up late with nothing to do but watch infomercials on TV? If you ever sat there thinking, “Hey, I thought of that product years ago, and look at that guy making a fortune from selling it.” There’s only one difference between him and you: He not only thought about it; he’s one of the tiny percentage of people who actually did more than think. He made it happen. He took all the necessary steps and put up with the pain to make it work.
It turns out that most people have the capacity to double or triple their income just by consistently applying what they already know. Despite this, we continue to chase new ideas, thinking the next one is the one that will magically make it all come together, but how can it if we don’t execute? Unfortunately, there’s no company you can call and tell that you have a great idea and they pay you cash for it on the spot. It just doesn’t work that way. There are companies that would buy you out once you’ve shown that your product works and is a money maker, but you would have to go through all the development to make that happen.
So why don’t we just do it? Why do we drop the “execution ball”? Maybe it’s because we are thinking about time in the wrong way. We tend to think we have all the time in the world so we don’t do it now; we put it off till later, but later sometimes never comes. Let’s say you have a baby and have all these vague notions about saving for college. Well, before you know it, she’s 12 years old and you don’t have a penny saved. Quite simply, we don’t do what doesn’t seem urgent. It isn’t that we don’t know how to save; we just don’t execute.
If urgency is one of the problems with execution, specific time limits with shorter durations could make us move to action more expediently. What if we thought about three months as being a year for the purpose of reaching our goals? Three months gives us only 90 days instead of a whopping 365. When you think this way you’re far more likely to feel a healthy sense of urgency that gets you focused. And whether your goal is business or personal, you’ll get far more done in far less time and you’ll feel a lot less stressed and a lot more in control.
Here are a few tips on how you can better tackle life’s big to-dos.
Envision a future that’s worth the pain of change. The No. 1 thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of and to execute your plans, is your comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the future that you want even more than your desire for short-term comfort. Then and only then can you align your shorter-term goals and plans with that long-term vision.
If you are going to perform at a high level, take new ground. Continuing to look at yourself and your so-called “position in life” as being the hand that was dealt to you isn’t going to get you anywhere. Taking on the persona of a successful individual makes you feel you can succeed despite all obstacles. In other words, “Fake it till you make it.” One way to get there is by asking, “What if?” Doing so allows you to entertain new possibilities and begin to connect with the benefits. If you’re going to create a breakthrough, if you’re going to reach the next level, you will need to move through fear, uncertainty and discomfort. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult.
Once you have your vision, stay in touch with it constantly. Print it out and keep it with you or make it the “Home Screen” on your smart phone so you have to see it all day. Review it every day and update it every time you discover ways to make it more vivid and meaningful to you. Share it with others. Doing so will increase your commitment to it.
Live with intentional imbalance. How many articles, books and blog posts have you read emphasizing the importance of establishing work/life balance? A lot, right? But where much of the advice goes wrong is around the idea of equality. Often, we’re told what we need to do to spend equal time in each area of our lives. The result is often unproductive and frustrating. Life balance is not about equal time in each area; it’s more about intentional imbalance. Life balance is achieved when you are purposeful about how and where you spend your time, energy and effort. At different times in your life, you will choose to focus on one area over another, and that’s perfectly fine, provided it’s intentional. Life has different seasons, each with its own set of challenges and blessings.
Let’s say that you want to write a book, as so many of us do, but it’s the new television season and all your favorite shows are on. Go buy yourself a TiVo, record all your shows and commit to watching them only after you’ve finished your book. Choose a time every day when you will write for at least a few hours. Then all that’s left to do is execute. In a couple of months your book will be done and you can go back to being a couch potato for a while.
Make sure you’re committed, not merely interested. There is a humorous anecdote about commitment involving a chicken and a pig at breakfast time. The chicken has contributed the egg and is therefore merely interested in the breakfast; the pig, however, contributes the bacon and is thus completely committed. When you’re merely interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit, but when you’re totally committed you accept no excuses, only results. There’s no denying that at that breakfast the pig is all in. And that’s how you must approach the commitments you take on.
Put hard (and short) deadlines on what you need to get done. The more time you have the more you will be tempted to procrastinate. Setting a goal for the end of the year when it is only January – heck, even in July – still feels too far away to spur you into action. But consider the rush of productivity that occurs when a deadline you have to meet draws closer, so giving yourself short deadlines keeps you excited, active and productive a good portion of the time.
The great thing about 90-day goals is that the deadline is always near enough that you never lose sight of it, but it’s long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and move you to action.
Write down your plan. It lets you make your mistakes on paper. A “plan” in your head isn’t really a plan; it’s a “wish” or a “dream.” That’s because life gets in the way, and if you don’t have a written plan you will almost certainly drop the ball in the first few days. The world is noisy, the unexpected happens, distractions arise, your desire for comfort tugs at you and you lose focus on the things you know you should do. But if you sit down at the start of your 90 days and write out your strategy, it forces you to think through potential pitfalls up front.
Making your mistakes on paper reduces miscues during implementation. You no longer waste time on unimportant activities, because your plan triggers your actions. Your action choices are made proactively at the beginning of the 90 days when you create your plan. In short, a 90-day plan helps you to get more of the right things done each day and ultimately helps you reach your goals faster and with greater impact.
Give each goal its own set of tactics. The way your plan is structured and written impacts your ability to execute effectively. Effective planning strikes a working balance between too much complexity and too little detail. Your plan should start by identifying your overall goal. Then, you’ll need to determine the tactics needed to meet it.
Break your 90-day goal down to its individual parts. For example, if your goal is to earn $10,000 and lose 10 pounds, you should write tactics for your income goal and your weight-loss goal separately. Tactics are the daily to-dos that drive the attainment of your goals. Tactics must be specific and actionable and must include due dates and assigned responsibilities. The 90-day plan is structured so that if the tactics are completed on a timely basis the goals are achieved.
Take it one week at a time. To guide you on your journey to completing your tactics and meeting your goals, you’ll need weekly plans. You want to bite off small chunks so each week you feel a sense of accomplishment and that you’re drawing closer to the finish line. Your weekly plan encompasses your strategies and priorities, your long-term and short-term tasks, and your commitments in the context of time. It helps you focus on the elements of your plan that must happen each week to keep you on track with your 90-day goals. Your goals in turn keep you on track with your vision. Everything is powerfully aligned.
Start each day by consulting with your weekly plan. Check in with it several times throughout the day. If you’ve scheduled a tactic to be completed that day, don’t go home until it is done. This ensures that the critically important tasks, your plan tactics, are completed each week.
Keep track of your efforts and your results. You’ve probably heard or read the mantra, “What gets measured gets done.” It’s true: Measurement drives the execution process. After all, how do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve already accomplished? Measuring your results (how many pounds you lost or how much money you earned) will indicate whether your plan is on target or you need to readjust your tactics.
You have greater control over your actions than your results, and your results are created by your actions. To measure your execution, you need to know to what degree you followed through on each week’s tactics. This allows you to pinpoint breakdowns and respond quickly. Unlike results, which can lag weeks, months and in some instances years behind your actions, an execution measure provides more-immediate feedback, which allows you to make adjustments much faster.
Block your time. The 90-day plan is designed to help you spend your time with more intention. That said, many of us engage each day on its own terms. In other words, we satisfy the various demands of the day as they are presented, spending whatever time is needed to respond without giving much thought as to the relative value of the activity.
Basically, you block your days into three kinds of blocks: strategic, buffer and breakout blocks. A strategic block is uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each day. During this block you accept no phone calls, faxes, emails, visitors; no anything: You do only the activities on your plan. Buffer blocks are designed to deal with all the unplanned and low-value activities, like most email and voicemail, that arise throughout a typical day. Breakout blocks provide the time to handle everything else.
Finally, working the 90-day plan will help you rethink your multitasking ways. If you’re accustomed to sending emails during meetings, juggling texting conversations and rushing from one place or thing to the next, you’ll be shocked by how much getting focused on what matters most will change your life.
Most people look back and realize that with all their effort to not miss anything, they were missing everything. They see that nothing was getting their full attention, not the important projects, not the important conversations and not the important people.
We must all remember that the current moment is all we have. We create the future and achieve our dreams in the current moment. Use your knowledge to make your plan and execute it. It will make you one of the few, not the many.
