Franklin And Steven Covey have inspired the world with their works on effective Habits for getting ahead and making a mark, personally and professionally. Their lessons are being passed on to inspire more people to achieve their best.

BS RAO, Exec Vice President, FranklinCovey, SouthAsia,

Excerpts:

Let's look at our own life experience, each one of us has grown with challenges. As we grow from childhood to executive level we learn to use our traits / skill sets to overcome the challenges. Let's look at it from an organizations' perspective. Execution is what makes great ideas turn into reality; Great Individuals know that the essentials of success are execution. If you observe how Venture capitalists identify a company in which they want to invest the core is again capacity to execute.

I was fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Ramacharan, who is the author of the book ‘Execution'. Leadership is not a challenge today execution is the challenge, that's what takes a company to greatness. 

Every company has its own Mission, Vision, Strategy and Goals. Gap between what is planned and what is achieved, is called the ‘Execution Gap'. Driving forces are those forces affecting a situation that are pushing in a particular direction; they tend to initiate a change and keep it going. It could be the task of improving productivity or sales in the organization. Restraining forces are forces acting to restrain or decrease the driving forces. Goal is reached when the sum of the driving forces equals the sum of the restraining forces.

The average tenure of a CEO across the globe has dropped to 1.3 years due to the inability to perform consistently quarter on quarter.

To move your organization from current position to desired result, the driving forces required are Great Technology, Good teamwork, and adequate finances at the right time, Infrastructure and Follow through from great leader ship. However if the team and the leadership have no commitment, do not believe in teamwork, if there are continuous conflicts, Low trust between different departments and no vision from the Top management then the Gap will not close, hence the Desired result will not be reached.

Even a great idea shared with the whole team can fall apart with out proper direction to the team.

Hence for a great idea to succeed begin with the end in mind- have clarity of the idea, Convert the plan into clear action plan with clearly defined, important milestones. Prioritize the action plan and focus on small successes rather than on the roadblocks. Think win-win, Synergize with team and take calculated risks, roadblocks are only minor hurdles - Seek first to understand than to be understood. Each milestone should be acknowledged and shared with the team, which will further motivate them.

Be Proactive and Stay Motivated, Go for your end result with single minded dedication and constantly sharpen the skill sets of the team.

Take the example of a bunch of little kids being coached to play football, the kids keep kicking the ball without purpose and never hit a goal, because they cannot understand the coach, nor do they have a common objective - to hit a goal.

Compare this to the organization, most often organizations are not clear about what their goals and top priorities really are, so they run around in all directions instead of working together towards the common goal. Its one thing to come up with high level goals and great strategies but quite another to actually achieve them. This is called the execution gap.

Most often there are too many goals or they change too often or are under communicated. Just because the leadership has understood what they want to achieve, it does not mean they can be achieved till they are clearly communicated to the frontline where the action really happens.

Front line produces the bottom line. Sometimes people know what the goals are but they haven't bought into them. Ownership is lacking, they are not connected to the goal, no involvement - no commitment.

49% of work hours are spent on important tasks, rest of the time is spent on urgent but less important work. They don't know what they are supposed to do to help the organisation to reach the goal, once people are clear what the goals are, they will try various things in an effort to reach them. So the point is that to achieve your goal you've never reached before, you simply need to do things that you've never done before.

Imagine the impact when everyone in the team understands what the goals are and work towards that goal.

Rao is currently working as an Executive Vice President, with FranklinCovey who is the global leader in Training and consulting, with a presence in 44 countries. Rao comes with 22 years of experience in the IT industry across the globe. He has worked with Fortune 100, Fortune 500 and other large organizations.

He was speaking at a Panel Discussion organized by Businessgyan and TASMAC  on the topic ‘ Getting it done'. 

Compiled by Ms. Mangal D Karnad for Businessgyan

Issue BG88 July 08

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