It's Not Rocket Science: 4 Simple Strategies for Mastering the Art of Execution

Chapter 2Make Each Day a Masterpiece

The Challenge

Leaders often spend immense time giving thought to, creating, and communicating annual visions or forecasts for their enterprises. These are then broken down into monthly objectives for their teams to achieve. These big pictures provide essential direction, unity, and meaning in the workplace. Although vision-casting is vital, the conversation must quickly shift to “What must we execute daily to get there, and how must we do it?” Your focus should first prioritize the where, but then be invested disproportionately toward identifying and managing those essential daily behaviors that convert what I call TUFs (short for the ultimate few objectives that mean the most) into reality. Without this specific focus on the what and the how, you will succeed only in creating more goals that will disappoint because their execution failed.

Commit to a Ferocious Focus on Activities—the Daily MAX Acts—the Key Activities Most Responsible for Desired Outcomes

The outcome focus versus activity focus imbalance is somewhat understandable because team vision casting and goal setting are fun, and dreaming of new outcome objectives (TUFs) is creative and inspiring. Selecting and focusing on those ultimate few objectives will be discussed in detail in the upcoming chapter “Get TUF!” Determining, discussing, and executing the activities most likely to create the outcomes can seem mundane and often requires deeper thought; therefore, it is harder work ...