Welcome to the Excellence University (EU) Journal. EU is an association of organizations all committed to providing the highest quality on site and online training in three core areas: Business Excellence, Personal Effectiveness, and Life Satisfaction.
Good activity alignment is achieved via constant attention to how well the completion of simple “Yes-No” Activities (small activities that are either “done or not done”) help with the achievement of SMART Goals (the specific, measurable steps toward fulfilling broader objectives). An indication of good activity alignment is reduction in two major barriers to Execution Excellence: Read the rest of this article »
The ability to overcome a variety of barriers blocking Execution Excellence can be extremely helpful when SMART Goals are not being achieved regularly. This can be done by “flipping” barriers into objectives that can be achieved as part of the overall mission. Read the rest of this article »
The ability to get things done on time is a critical component of Execution Excellence that is often ignored. It begins with a commitment to setting reasonable deadlines (rather than setting unreasonable deadlines or failing to set any at all), then following through with those carefully set deadlines. Indeed, because the “R” in SMART Goal stands for “Realistic,” no goal is truly SMART without having a reasonable deadline. Read the rest of this article »
Another critical component of Execution Excellence is the ability to follow through with commitments without needing others to “check in” on one’s progress. The ability to self-monitor begins with a commitment to being reliable, is strengthened by the ability to set truly SMART Goals, and is fortified further by the ability to remind oneself of one’s commitments regularly (rather than depending on others to do so). Specific (the “S” in SMART) and time-bound (the “T” in SMART) goals help one to be very clear on commitments before they are accepted. Regular goal achievement becomes more realistic (the “R” in SMART) when every individual responsible for the achievement of every goal takes accountability for the following: (a) the SMARTness of every goal they agree to take on and (b) reminding themselves of this commitment (rather than depending on others to do so). Read the rest of this article »
Another critical component of Execution Excellence is the ability to not only complete SMART Goals on deadline, but to also do this with true quality on a regular basis. The ability to do so begins with a commitment to quality, is strengthened by becoming clear about what quality looks like (with others if you are working on something that includes other stakeholders), and is further fortified by persistence until the job is done extremely well (rather than giving up before true quality is achieved). Read the rest of this article »
