For the last 5 years Execution Gap has been a favorite buzzword of healing underperformance in business. Simply stated most organizations fall far behind at least some of their stated goals due to lack of follow-through by their members. Countless organizations focus on this from FranklinCovey through Palladium to David Allen. According to research by Steven Covey, • only 9% of employees can relate their daily activity to their company's goals • only 44% can describe what their company's goals are David Norton (the inventor of the Balanced Scorecard) states that 90% of the companies fail to execute on their strategy. More than half of the people in this country work without clearly understanding what they are really supposed to do. There are dozens of consulting outfits focused on this topic and the key recommendations are as follows:
- Companies should focus on fewer goals (2-3 at most)
- Break down goals to chunks that team members can relate to and get excited about
- Everyone should have a role at least in developing the action plans (decentralize strategy)
- Everyone should do what they said they would do
- Measure results and hold each other accountable
- Spend 20% on planning and 80% on actions
- Make sure incentives and disincentives are aligned with actual results
When the majority of the population faces strategic planning once a year in the form of New Year Resolutions and no elementary training in any form of planning or execution discipline it is not surprising that only half of the people surveyed can translate organizational goals to personal goals. Wouldn't it be great if high school or college curricula included execution as a critical element. There are pioneers out there from David Allen Co, Franklin Covey's K-12 Execution Training and volunteers like Marc Orchant that one day may create a better trained society in results and follow-through.
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