Excellence University Journal

Disciplined Execution… Making the Training Stick

by John Spence

January 18th, 2007

For more than a dozen years I have traveled worldwide sharing my insights and ideas with top companies. From IBM and GE to Merrill Lynch and Verizon I have had the opportunity to work closely with senior managers at more than 300 companies. And almost to a person, their top concern after one of my classes is always: “John, we love your session, these are amazing ideas that could have a huge impact on our business… but how do we make sure we take these ideas and put them into action? How do we make sure the training sticks, that this is not just an event but a real catalyst for positive change?”

The answer is simple, but by no means easy. The fulcrum for taking ideas and turning them into action is creating a performance-oriented culture of “disciplined execution.” An organization where people have a sense of urgency to get the most important priorities accomplished and where every person holds themselves and their fellow workers 100% accountable for accomplishing key goals.

The problem however is that this does not happen by fate, chance or good luck. It does not happen because you talk about it at meetings or send out a memo. It has been my experience that the ONLY way to create that sort of high-performance culture is to put in place a systematic and comprehensive process to measure, track, reward and discipline the behaviors and outputs that management desires.

This is exactly why I am so excited about the EBSS and have been recommending it to my clients. Finally I have discovered an elegant solution for one of the most vexing challenges in business today: lack of execution. The EBSS is a heavily researched and widely tested approach to understanding, uncovering and addressing the blocks that stand in the way of high-level performance. The way we have been describing it in our meetings is that the EBSS “cuts down all of the tress.” In other words, it removes all of the places to hide. Implementation of the EBSS addresses what I feel are the two most critical success factors for creating a high-performance work atmosphere: first it teaches people why they procrastinate, miss deadlines and don’t achieve important goals – so on a cognitive level they understand what is standing in their way. Second, it puts in place a very clear and unbiased system for creating clarity and consensus on the most important priorities and tracking exactly how each person in the organization is doing in their effort to accomplish their specific tasks in support of those critical success factors.

Now again I will say that it is simple but not easy. In the early stages people will often push back against such a system. They will realize that they will now be held to a new level of accountability. However, what typically happens is the very best people in the organization will absolutely revel in the process because it will clearly show how well they perform. The mid-level people will realize that they need to step-up their work and will use the system to greatly improve their efficiency and effectiveness. And the poor performs will fight and complain and make excuses… then leave.

In the final analysis it is important to keep in mind that companies and people are not paid solely to “have good ideas” – they create value in the marketplace by taking those good ideas and putting them into action. Innovation and talent is useless without a performance-oriented culture of disciplined execution – and that level of accountability and goal achievement is impossible without a comprehensive system to support it.

Article Filed under: I. WATER (Team/Group Excellence)