A Shout Out to Execution Excellence

I was remembering a conversation that I had with one of my team members many years ago. He had walked in to my office and said, "Ravi, I need a job that is more strategic than what I am doing today." I told him that it was really nice that he was trying to tie in strategy with what he was doing and asked him why he thought his own role was not strategic in nature. He responded,"I am handling operations today. It is a delivery role. There is nothing strategic about this role."

Any definition of strategy shows how implementation is critical. This is because, as the poet TS Eliott wrote, "Between the idea and reality falls the shadow." Thomas Edison said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." What he wanted to say was that genius was pretty much hard work rather than just a sudden flash of insight.  Similarly, in the organizations of today, a strategy is useless unless there are people who can make them a reality.  Today, there is a desperate need for people who can execute and execute well on time. The best of plans are of no use if they are not implemented.

When it comes to brass tacks, most of the leaders are those who have executed very well on their jobs and not necessarily strategic in their thinking. While strategic thinking has helped, it is not the only ingredient to be in those leadership roles. Please do not mistake me as someone who under estimates the importance of strategy. That is definitely not the case. It is critical to understand that the spark of strategy is essential.  Leaders need to have a strategic bent of mind but not necessarily be strategists.  This also means that leaders need to understand that if formulating strategy is not their forte, they need to hire people with those skill sets so that the spark is available for the organization.  Such skill sets are not easy to find and so leaders need to choose the right mix of people in his/her team to ensure they have these thinkers.

As these strategists are hard to find, we end up paying a premium to them. Hence the clamour for such roles.  In my professional life, I have put a lot of emphasis on getting a mix. To succeed, we need a mix of thinkers, doers and thinker-doers. As we go through turbulent times where everything around us is changing rapidly, there is a need for people who will put their heads down and execute to plan.  With 99% being perspiration, there is more need for great executors and organizations should start investing in to such people. Some of them will be great thinkers but not all...does not matter at all.

 

We pay so much of heed to disruptive technologies (and rightfully so) that, at times, we forget the wonderful beings who are executing phenomenally well whatever be the business condition. Let us invest in these people as much as we invest in technologies...organizations will reap the dividends.