Most likely you have big plans for your business in the New Year.
I have talked with many people, and they are beyond ready for their company to be able to move past the myriad of COVID-19 related difficulties they have incurred these past two years.
With regards to making the plans for your company a reality, you need to start with a clear Vision of where you want to take it and then identify a definite Strategy for getting there.
But the other key piece you must put in place is a specific Execution plan to make it all happen.
A clear-cut Execution plan is required even more so in our current environment because many businesses in America and across the world are struggling with their operations.
Challenges in Your Personnel Area
One of these challenging operational arenas involves the personnel area.
An example of this is that many organizations (perhaps including your company) are having great difficulty finding enough people to staff their operations.
Amazon is looking for 125,000 people and Walmart wants to add 170,000.
Retailers in the U.S. wanted to add up to 650,000 staff for the holiday season, and restaurants are short almost one million people. Help wanted signs are everywhere.
Besides a worker shortage, there is acute shortage of people with certain skills – which is causing problems across the economy. For instance, the current shortage of 80,000 truck drivers is exacerbating the supply chain challenges now being experienced.
Likewise, COVID-19 has tremendously changed how businesses function. Because many people are now working from home, new systems, processes, and software are having to be developed.
All of this boils down to the fact that to achieve the goals for your company while trying to overcome problems like these a structured approach to executing your game plan should be embraced.
The Two Options for Executing Your Game Plan
Why is this issue important?
It is crucial because various studies show that 55% to 70% of a business’s success is tied directly to proper execution!
What are the options for accomplishing the plans for your business?
The Busyness Method of Execution
From one standpoint, execution is easy. You just do it (whatever “it” is)! However, there are two different types or methods of execution. The first is to simply get busy doing various activities. I call this the busyness method.
The activities engaged in the busyness method may or may not be productive activities. The underlying problem with the busyness method is the majority of activities are tactical actions, which are not necessarily tied to your strategic plan.
Just like the paraphrase from Alice in Wonderland, “The faster you go, the behinder you get,” the busyness method can lead to activity for the sake of activity. Its mantra is “get busy doing something.”
In the extreme, the busyness execution approach can lead to operating in the envelope of the ill-fated “tyranny of the urgent,” where a company spends so much of its time in crisis management that it loses sight of the big picture—what it should be trying to accomplish—and thereby sees little or no progress toward its long-term goals.
The organization then starts to operate primarily in a reactive mode with the concept of planning being nothing more than the solution to today’s crisis du jour.
Structured Execution
The alternative is Structured Execution.
What does a Structured Execution approach look like?
In general, Structured Execution is an intentional method of executing a company’s overall game plan in a disciplined manner.
Below please find a diagram of our Structure of Success™ methodology that reading from the bottom up shows a business’ execution is based upon its Vision, Critical Success Factors and Strategy.
As outlined my upcoming 4th book, Work Less, Make More and Have Fun in Your Business I would like to explore the concept of Structured Execution.
Which can be seen from the above diagram, there are five components that comprise Structured Execution. By performing each of these sequentially, an intentional, systematic, and disciplined execution approach to operating your company is obtained.
Systems
Systems encompass both your overall plans and detailed processes. Your processes are the blueprints for how you want to operate each of the six areas (Vision & Leadership, Marketing & Sales, Production, Finance & Administration, Human Assets and Information Technology) of your business. No two businesses would have the exact same systems because they are unique to each business.
Systems and their detailed processes are key for your business. There are three steps that must be completed with regard to your processes:
- Identify your processes
- Optimize your processes
- Fully document your processes
Personnel
This component involves the determination of the people whom you will require to execute your systems.
While the plans and processes that comprise your systems identify what will be done and how it will be accomplished, people are required to execute the systems. No matter how automated your company is, you will still need to determine the people resources you will require to execute and monitor your systems.
This personnel component involves four basic tasks:
- Defining the role each person will play and his/her job responsibilities
- Ascertaining the skill sets or employee profiles you will require for each process
- Determining how many people you will require for each process
- Establishing what pay, fringe benefits, and other employment benefits you will offer employees
Metrics
These are measurements that indicate if your processes are working correctly.
Metrics are measurements that effectively track your performance throughout your company or monitor your progress on key issues. They are crucial in determining whether your systems are working correctly and are important because:
- What gets measured gets managed and improved
- You cannot improve what you do not measure
- In the end, what you measure is what you get
Quality Loops
Quality Loops are written documents that function as a key tool in ensuring that your business’s processes continue to operate as they are designed by including a self-correcting mechanism within your structured execution plan.
How do they work?
If a process stops functioning properly, the individual or team that is executing the process can rectify the problem by use of a Quality Loop document without the company owner needing to get involved. Quality Loops assist your business in functioning on auto pilot as much as possible, which in turn produces a liberating approach to operating your business.
The documents can either be hard copy ones or electronic ones. The important thing is that they need to be readily available to the people executing the process.
Incentives
The final component of your execution are incentives – which reinforce the carrying out of the first four segments of your structured execution plan. Incentives and rewards induce a person, team, group, division, or the entire business to do things a certain way.
If there were no incentives, anyone and everyone in your company could do everything as they see fit! The overall objective of the use of incentives is that your business executes your strategy in a way that will result in your enterprise achieving its Vision.
Where to Start
The implementation of a Structured approach to the execution of your enterprise’s game plan involves five things:
- Identify, optimize, and fully document the systems that will enable your company to meet its operational targets on a consistent basis
- Determine the personnel required for your systems to operate correctly
- Put in place the metrics necessary to ensure that both your systems and related personnel are functioning properly
- Establish and utilize Quality Loops that will assure personnel and management know what actions to take if the business’s operations go awry
- Identify and implement incentives and rewards for employees adhering to the above items
Together, the development and enactment of an entity’s five components of structured execution will lead to leadership, management, staff, and customers obtaining what they desire from the company.
If you could use assistance with optimizing the execution of your company’s game plan, please contact us using the information below so we can be a resource to you in this all-important area.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 21, years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive, and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century enterprise.
Office: (770) 642-4220
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
Tags: Business Planning, entrepreneur, front end of innovation, innovation, invention, small business consulting, small business planning, start a business
