Execution – Dan Greer

How To Deliver On Your Promises As A Leader

Dan Greer — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 15:10:23 +0000

Many times the reasons our change initiatives fail is that we simply moved to fast with all of the who, what and when without thoroughly explaining the why. If the building in on fire you don’t have time. However, that is rarely the case and we need to admit that this is a critical part of the leadership process. This Forbes post was extremely insightful:

“Whenever we announce a change, whether to ourselves, our friends and relatives or our organizations, we make promises. The change might result in a better work-life balance, happily ever after, a greater market share, a larger stock dividend or maybe even environmental healing. We tell ourselves and others that the investment is going to be significant, but the return will be well worth it. If we are honest, we acknowledge that it will take hard work and there will be mistakes along the way — we don’t know what we don’t know”

6 Reasons We Make Bad Decisions At Work And What To Do About Them

Dan Greer — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 06:00:22 +0000

Harvard Business Review has been my go to resource for best practice leadership development for over ten years. Everything they publish is high quality and occasionally they absolutely hit it out of the park. This post by Mike Erwin is one of those times:

“Research has shown that that the typical person makes about 2,000 decisions every waking hour. Most decisions are minor and we make them instinctively or automatically — what to wear to work in the morning, whether to eat lunch now or in ten minutes, etc. But many of the decisions we make throughout the day take real thought, and have serious consequences. Consistently making good decisions is arguably the most important habit we can develop, especially at work.”

How To Move From Self-Awareness To Self-Improvement

Dan Greer — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 16:32:23 +0000

As a leader who feels compelled to represent all of the high D’s out there, enough with all of this getting in touch with our feelings. Oh I admit the subject of emotional intelligence is extremely important but I always want to learn something that I can actually apply. This HBR post made me happy:

“We know that leaders need self-awareness to be effective. That is, an understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, feelings, thoughts, and values — as well as how they affect the people around them. But that’s only half of the story. Self-awareness is useless without an equally important skill: self-management.

A client of mine, we’ll call him Rick, serves as a case in point. He has been given repeated feedback that he speaks too often and for too long in meetings. He has told me that he wants to improve this behavior and learn how to be a more productive participant in order to help his team make better decisions.”

How To Excel At Both Strategy And Execution

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 06:00:38 +0000

Some leaders are always coming up with new creative ideas that never seem to make it to the point of driving sustainable results. Others kill it daily on execution but never look up enough to see where the organization is actually going. Both are extremely important and great leaders find a way for their organizations to excel in both. This HBR post is excellent:

“For decades, we’ve often thought of leadership profiles in unique buckets—two popular varieties were the “visionaries”, who embrace strategy and think about amazing things to do, and the “operators”, who get stuff done. We intuitively knew that there must be leaders that span these areas, but in fact, few do.”

Is Execution Where Good Strategies Go To Die

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 06:00:15 +0000

One of the greatest challenges in leadership is to take the hours of planning within a small group of leaders at the top and drive it down throughout the entire organization without loosing effectiveness. Great innovative ideas that come out of a small group of executive leaders sometimes simply don’t work well in the real world with execution constraints. This HBR post is excellent:

“Execution is an odd word. On the one hand, it means “the carrying out of a plan or course of action.” On the other, it means, “the carrying out of a death sentence.” When leaders “execute a strategy,” they usually mean the former — putting an idea into action. But those efforts all too often end up meaning the latter. Execution is often where strategies go to die.”

The 3 Critical Steps Of Execution

Fri, 05 May 2017 06:00:26 +0000

It is amazing to me how all of the most respected people in the field of leadership are so consistently saying the same things about the most important things that all organizations need to be doing. It really started when Steven Covey wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People followed by Jim Collins Good to Great and now every bestselling book on leadership prioritizes the same factors.

Execution is a great read by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. They define execution as the discipline of getting things done.

They start with the number one issue of the day the personal character of the leader. If you are not able to execute your own personal priorities then you will never be able to establish execution as a priority for your organization.

In the spirit of Good to Great they insist that the leader must never delegate their most important responsibility of getting the right people on the team. This factor more than any other will determine if you r people can consistently move beyond creative development and project planning to actually get the job done.

The next priority is to create a culture of discipline where execution is valued. A great insight is that we don’t think ourselves into a new way of acting, we act ourselves into a new way of thinking. Translation, at some point in time we need to stop talking about the problem and start doing something to solve it.

Finally, after the leader has set clear goals and priorities you must evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy. Then it is extremely important to reward the doers who are actually getting the job done and this will move execution to the top of your leadership core values.

How To Decide Every Day What’s Next?

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 06:00:27 +0000

This phrase became the mantra on the award winning series The West Wing. After every serious issue that had to be dealt with no matter how long the conversation or difficult the task the president would always ask what’s next?

That is a very good question that all of us have to answer each and every day regardless of whether we realize it or not. Inherent within the question is the intention to find the most important things on our must do list and place them at the top.

Most of us allocate a considerable amount of time to plan our weeks and certainly each individual day with pre-determined goals and priorities. However, in today’s wired culture we are constantly receiving new information throughout the day that must be processed.

David Allen is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on time management and personal productivity. In his book Getting Things Done he list four key criteria about processing new information that help him to answer the what’s next question:

Context—A few actions can be done anywhere but most require a specific location or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer. These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment.
Time available—When do you have to do something else? Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing many actions that require more time.
Energy available—How much energy do you have? Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy while others need more physical horsepower.
Priority—Given your context, time, and energy available, what actions will give you the highest payoff? This is where you need to access your intuition and begin to rely on your judgment call in the moment.

4 Ways To Be More Effective At Execution

Mon, 30 May 2016 06:00:53 +0000

I love being in the room when there are 30,000 foot white board meetings about the future. I also enjoy the planning phase of determining what needs to be done and how we will do it. At the end of the day though, unless the people who are responsible for actual execution do their job its all a waste. This HBR post is nails it:

“Most people recognize that execution is a critical skill and strive to perform it well, but they may a) underestimate how important it is to their career advancement or b) not realize that you can improve on execution without working longer hours. On the first point, bosses place a premium on execution, which we define as the ability to achieve individual goals and objectives.”

Leaders Effectiveness In Strategy Or Execution

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 06:00:09 +0000

There are clearly two extremes in the leadership world today. Some leaders are incredibly creative and can translate that into a workable strategy. Others are wildly successful in getting the ball over the goal line and meeting expectations. This HBR post reveals some harsh reality about leaders that needs to be understood:

“In a 2013 survey of nearly 700 executives across a variety of industries, our firm asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of the top leaders of their companies. How many excelled at strategy? How many excelled at execution? The results are shown in the chart below.”

How To Really Get Things Done

dangreer — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 06:00:08 +0000

It seems like I am always looking for some new tool to help me get things done. I almost need an app to manage all my productivity apps. My real problem though is not that I don’t know what needs to be done but I often lack the energy to get the project over the goal line. Cary Nieuwhof hits the nail on the head:

“We could end the post there (just get a new app!), but chances are no matter how great your task management system is, you’re probably still feeling a bit overwhelmed right now as you look at your massive to do list. No app can fix that. But maybe this can.”