Want to achieve growth in any area of your business. It comes down to 5 basic disciplines.
1. Goal - Set a goal that is measurable and has a due date. Example: We will grow sales from X to Y by X date.
2. Reporting - In addition to tracking your progress to the goal daily, you also must track and report on all activities that can influence the goal
3. Evaluate - Set aside time each week to flush out issues then turn the issues into tasks, each task needs a person assigned to it and a due date.
4. Agenda - At the beginning of each week and each morning check your agenda to make sure you planned the right amount of time to work on the tasks that you created in step 3.
5. Take Care Of Business - Stick to your agenda and stay focused during those times to get the tasks completed on time, every time.
Below are the common mistakes that keep teams from world class execution and tips for avoiding them.
1. Goal Mistakes - Goal aren’t clear, such as I want to grow sales or I want to improve team communication. The goal must be absolute, such as I want to grow sales from X to Y by X date or I want to implement a weekly communication meeting by X date.
Tip: SMART goals are a great goal framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
Assignable – specify who will do it.
Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
2. Reporting Mistakes - Either there is no reporting in place or the reporting is done after the month ends, which is too late to take corse correcting action. Good reporting should be daily, and should include every stat that can influence the goal.
Tip: If you run a sales team you should have daily reporting on both the skill and the effort of the team so you know exactly what is causing you to slip below goal and what needs to be improved. For example you could report on calls made (Effort), closed sales (Skill) and all the steps that impact a sale.
3. Evaluate mistakes - Most teams never set aside weekly time to think through issues and come up with ideas for improvement. Most teams will meet at the beginning of the project and again at the end of the project but good execution is a fluid process which is constantly changing. Therefore it requires weekly if not daily meetings to think through issues that arise and come up with new ideas to get you to the goal.
Tip: Set aside 30 minutes one day a week. The agenda is 10 minutes to flush out issues, 10 minutes to brainstorm solutions and ideas for improvement, 10 minutes to turn those ideas into tasks and assigning them to people with due dates. Asana.com is excellent tool for keeping track of issues, ideas for improvement and tasks.
4. Agenda Mistakes - Many teams forget to set aside time to plan out when they will work on the tasks that come up in step 3. It seems silly to set aside time for setting aside time, but it’s critical for good execution.
Tip: Set aside 30 minutes every Sunday night or Monday morning to schedule time in your calendar for the week to work on the tasks that need to get done. Then set up 15 minutes at the beginning of each day to make sure you still have the right amount of time scheduled to get everything done. Giving yourself shorter time slots will force you to work on the project and get it done, so 30 minute or hour time slots are usually more productive than say 2 or 3 hour time slots.
5. Take Care of Business Mistakes - Work at every company is always a bit chaotic. There are constantly “fires” that need to be put out and team members, customers, bosses pulling you in many different directions at the same time. BUT that goal you set is more important so you have to be disciplined to prioritize and stick to your scheduled time slots and stay focused during those time slots to do the work.
Tip: Schedule time in your calendar to work on the unplanned but urgent stuff “fires” that always happens at work. When someone comes to you in the middle of your scheduled time to work on your tasks that relate to your goal you can politely let them know when you will work on the “fire” they just brought to you.
In closing, knowing what you need to do and having the discipline to do it are two different things. The above process takes a tremendous amount of discipline to stick to day in and day out. If you find yourself skipping a step or two for a couple weeks, don’t beat yourself up, it happens to everyone. Just get back up, dust yourself off and grind it out because the positive results you’ll get from the process will fuel you with energy to stick to the process and eventually these 5 steps will turn into habits. Once they become habit it get’s easier to stick with it and consistently achieve world class execution.