The Busy Leader's Handbook

7Know How to Get Things Done:

Hit the Brakes on the Ideas; Hit the Gas on the Execution

Have you ever come out of a brainstorming meeting all pumped up about all the great ideas, only to realize later that none of them came to fruition?

Most companies have no shortage of great ideas, and great ideas are important. Innovation is valuable. It keeps us sharp and competitive. Besides, it’s easy and fun to get excited about big ideas. What’s not quite so sexy is executing them. And so, too often, these companies just don’t.

A tendency to fall short on execution creates serious challenges for a company. In a business world that gets more complex and moves faster every day, being able to execute quickly and efficiently is a survival skill. Competitors are everywhere and customers have extremely high expectations. The organizations that perform well in this high-pressure environment are those whose leaders have a bias toward execution. It’s not that they discourage innovative thinking. It’s that they know how to put boundaries around it and operationalize it.

When big ideas are flowing fast and furious, trying to process them all is like drinking from a fire hose. People get so overwhelmed that they can’t take in everything and they can’t move ahead on anything. (This is especially true in small companies, where everyone is so busy just running the day-to-day business that there’s little time for anything else.) They end up going a mile wide and an inch deep on things instead of picking ...