I love this quote from Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher. “We have a strategic plan, its called doing things”

I spend a portion of my time throughout the year, working with leaders and leadership teams facilitating alignment around their strategic plans. All too often they are stuck in analysis paralysis, often turning to me hoping I have the golden answer that will guarantee them they won’t fail if they take action.

Two days I week I am honoured to mentor start up CEOs through the Accelerator Centre and Communitech. One of the things I adore about the start up community is the culture that currently exists around “failing forward”. This falls right into Herb’s point with his quote. We must keep moving forward, keep taking action and learning as we execute. Many people talk and brainstorm endlessly without coming to a conclusion just because they want to cover all the bases and want to get ALL of the opinions before finally starting with the first step. A fear of failure holds many leaders back. The successful ones keep moving forward, DOING things.

Herb’s doesn’t say anything about vision specifically in this quote. If you have watched his work as a leader you know full well that man was always crystal clear about his vision for his organization and always clear about HOW he would achieve his vision – through is people and valuing them. Taking action and always executing “doing things” doesn’t mean not having a clear vision as part of your strategic plan. Herb is simply underscoring Peter Drucker’s message “strategy is common place, implementation is the art”.

I know strategy is fun. Trust me, I live it daily and that sandbox is terribly fun to play in. What’s just as important to a business as strategy – and more difficult to master – is execution.

“The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.”
– Tom Peters

Author Gary Harpst writes, “An astounding 90% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution.” Larry Bossidy, former AlliedSignal CEO, declared in his book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done that, “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t well executed.” Yup!

As you can tell, I’m a big believer in strategy and alignment. You hear those words from me alot. What I want to see and hear more often from my clients are requests for help around execution. The author, Ram Charan writes, “The biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution.” Jack Welch probably said it best, “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction (Welch calls this the “big aha”) and execute like hell.” So make sure you have a clear focus on execution – and, the strategy part will be easier than you think.

So the next time you call me and say “We need to be more strategic” I will ensure we talk about execution, for this is surely where we can have the biggest impact on your business and for your customers.