Live from #Next2015

Atlanta, GA

Day 3

“Greatness hinges on execution”   Rich Matherne

Execution is critical to success. In fact, without it extinction will shortly follow.

After the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship in 2008 after adding two very high-profile free agent signings (Kevin Durant & Ray Allen), it became very popular for teams to look for quick fixes by paying big money to sign free agents that could bring a Championship quicker. But as Andrew Cathy pointed out, there was another team that had been together for years, a team that’s coach and core had won 4 championships before that Celtics team had won its first: the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs had won in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007. But, then this collection of superstars came together and won in 2008. This sent a false message across the basketball landscape–overpay for high-talent, put them together and win championships. This was a short-lived strategy and in 2014 the San Antonio Spurs were largely still together and executed by out-passing their opponets all the way to their 5th Championship.

The lesson learned is two-fold (1) don’t assume a collection of highly talented people will automatically get results and (2) build your entire team from top-to-bottom for execution and results. 

There are no short-cuts to greatness. Lasting and truly great results do not come overnight they come over time.

What the San Antonio Spurs have done consistently better over time than so many other teams in the same span has combined selfless behavior with superior execution. 

How selfless are you? How selfless is your organization?

Most leaders and organizations are full of the “me first” mentality. Organizations and leaders that truly get to the next level are those have discovered how to lead and instill “me last” or selfless principles as part of the core culture.

Superior execution that leads to great results is often born from hard work, organizational alignment and unity. Many organizations, leaders, teams find greater precision in their planning than in their execution. It is critical that organizations and leaders do the work that the plan calls for both expected and unexpected. Peter Drucker says “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degnerate into hard work.” Intentions are ideas without legs. Intentions are cars without drivers!

Jack Welch relays, “Good business leaders creat a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

I would ask who or what is driving your business? Then, who are what is driving the execution?

Organizations must activate the entire team towards superior execution. Don’t miss excellent execution is exercised by the entire organization. It is easy to merely rely on a few key cogs in the organization, but this strategy ultimately caps the organization at the ability of a few. It is imperative that organizations train their team for mastery of the essentials, not just familiarity of the essentials. Mastery dennotes the ability to accurately teach the information or skills needed for completion. Loose familiarity among your team creates gaps in execution that will impair and hinder your business results and most certainly keep you from greatness.

The Power of Team works in multiplication. What are you multipying? Strength. Helen Keller said this well, “alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” It’s the law of tug-of-war. One person, even a really strong person, will have a extremely difficult time defeat a team that has the combined of much more than the single, yet super-strong individual.

The Power of Team works in projection. Not only does the power of team multiply your efforts, it also severly increase your ability to project or magnify your message, your mission and your execution.

It is critical for leaders and organizations to combine control and speed as they drive toward the execution of change.  Dribbling the ball out of bounds, throwing an errant pass or dropping a wide open pass are all embarassing. There is a danger in organizations that rush to execute without the proper mission, movers and metrics in place.

 “Speed is fun and exciting, but crashing is embarassing.” Jon Bridges