Who Cares About Execution? Your Clients Do!

I recently wrote about what makes a successful company. A LinkedIn connection, Tibor Shanto, gave me great feedback. He liked my piece but felt I missed an opportunity to tie it all together. I wrote about many topics including leadership, focus, strategy, market, product, and culture. He felt I should have added a key one, execution. I reread my piece, and Tibor is right. 

This is one of the powerful elements of writing for a community of similar thinkers: business executives. They are hard to please and even more difficult to impress. That's the bad news. On social media, the good news is you get a chance to correct a mistake or add something that was missing. Thanks, Tibor. 

To me, execution takes two, and only two forms: successful execution and failed execution. I can't find a happy medium.

Perhaps you have developed a great strategy, a map to get your company to a desired place in the future. You get it, and the guy who made the great PowerPoint slides gets it too. The slides with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one to explain what each one was and how it was to be used as evidence against you. (note, prior sentence lifted and changed from Arlo Guthrie's tune Alice's Restaurant). 

The management team gets it as well. Nah, no way. 

If the staff performing the desired steps to your golden future aren't on board, you are well on your way to a failed execution of strategy. Congratulations. Another document heading off to Iron Mountain for shredding and disposal. 

You may fail in executing by not implementing your product at all. I have experienced this. The most egregious example following a 15-month sales cycle. A complete contract with all the I's dotted and T's crossed. The project failed in implementation. 

Why? Communication, resource planning, mismanagement. 

The project ended up in the canceled category and the money paid returned. What a waste of time and a significant ding to the reputation of the company where I worked! Your business may also not execute with software version delivery. Or an upgrade. Or with quality. Clients don't like that in 2017. The software industry is maturing, and the days of using the complexity of technology as an excuse to delay the path to its brilliance are long gone. Failure in implementation is like announcing the wrong winner of the Miss Universe Pageant. Or, The Oscars. While rare, it still happens. Even in big, established companies. 

That covers strategy and project execution failure; we could go much deeper. That is the bad news. The good news is there are successful execution examples for each. 

I once sold a scalable solution to an insurance company that was looking to merge its technology. The benefits were to reduce redundancies and cost and increase efficiency and output. The project teams on both sides had A players assigned to them. There was clear accountability, a leader for each team, and an executive sponsor. One ass to kick, as I like to call it. The project went well. The client achieved the desired results, and the pro on the customer's side got promoted. Success. Guess what? They bought more from us and deemed us "strategic." When clients think of you this way, the path to the next sale becomes easier, not easy, but easier. Price resistance resides; it never goes away completely, but you are more likely to get what you want.

Why? Because you have proved you can deliver. 

Fifteen years ago I worked for a start-up that set the mark for strategy in my 30-year career. We had already raised and burned more than $15 million of venture capital money. We made some headway, but we were on the verge of going out of business. Limping along, we got a bridge loan to make payroll. Next, we closed a $2.5 million investment round that would prove to make all the difference for us. Yes, we gave away more of the company than we wanted to, but we had no choice. Desperation can do that.

We felt it was important to have a strategy. Sure, we had discussed it but early on it was sell, sell, sell. We had little regard for where the sales would take us even if we were successful making them. So we brought in a consultant we trusted. We formed a team that represented all functions of the company. The team spent real time developing a path, a path that would lead us to the desired end. Results were shared with the whole company. Placards were placed on the walls with the strategy. Everyone could look at a picture of where we were and where we were going. Staff asked questions and challenged assumptions. Some even disagreed with the path and destination. (This is good because it is these individuals who will get you there. Explaining strategy helps get them onboard.) Over time it was evident that our market was only so big and that 100% penetration was unlikely. The company shifted course to a strategy of exit. We sold to a strategic buyer for a healthy revenue multiple, and off we all went to the next experience.

Execution is key to successful business. Whether you’re a large or small enterprise, your clients count on you daily to deliver for them. If you don't, in time they will move on to a company that does. Strategy and product-related execution are two of the areas where delivering are key. Client support, marketing, sales as well as finance also rely on quality execution. It can be what makes your company stand out in a large crowd. 

My best, Chris