Overcoming Execution Roadblocks

Prioritizing Change & Making It Happen

Last Tuesday morning I was in the kitchen with my wife. It was the morning after we signed the offer letter to sell our home where we have lived for the last 20 years. The house where our son has grown up (he is 20 now) and we’ve had great memories. Neither one of us was very talkative, but I sensed she was thinking about something important.

I turned to my wife (who was the driver behind the sale) and asked, “are you okay with all of this?” She said, “I didn’t sleep last night – are we making a mistake?” I realized right then that it’s not the house we are attached to so much as the “home,” the place where we feel comfortable.

I see this type of thing happen all the time with my clients. Making the decision to change and improve is not the difficult part; it’s the psychological acceptance to make a change followed by the discipline to make it happen.

But why is that? A perfect example of this is a client I started working with about 3 years ago on strategic focus and leadership execution. A solid company, but they were stuck in the world of “what got you to this point is not good enough to get you to where you want to be.”

I facilitated a series of discussions and meetings to help the leadership team build a clear plan for operational improvement and business success. That was the easy part…executing on the plan proved to be the hard part. It was “comfortable” for them to operate the way they had been for so many years. Moving in a new direction was hampered by old ineffective habits and beliefs.

Their desire to move ahead on their own without my involvement was a typical reaction to the very thoughtful strategic planning effort they had just completed. I provided my advice to ensure a successful outcome, as I always do, and scheduled a 90-day follow-up to assess progress.

The progress meeting produced mediocre results, accompanied by a series of common excuses like… “We’re so busy,” “I don’t have enough time,” and “I have too many other priorities.” Nothing legitimate and they knew it. The discussion that followed produced an autopsy on why they failed to execute and boiled down to two key root causes…

Prioritizing Change. First, we learned that most of the team members did not make the planned changes a priority even though they agreed they were very important for sustainable success. Business goals and supporting tactics were grasped easily intellectually, but not emotionally. They didn’t ask themselves how their own behaviors needed to change and what thinking needed to shift.

They didn’t “buy-in” enough themselves initially, which then made it almost impossible to get other employees on board.

Follow-Through Discipline. The second key issue was the lack of follow-through. Although some changes were initiated we didn’t see any notable improvements in business measures and outcomes. On further analysis, we learned that the leadership team members ran into resistance to change in the organization and did not exercise the discipline to push through to a meaningful outcome.

​I’ve never heard anybody say that being a leader is easy because it’s not. When things are going well nobody notices because things are supposed to go well – it is expected of you as a leader. The true test is when things aren’t going well and need to change.

The secret is to start with yourself – get your head right, and if you make a decision to take action, then do it 100%. This concept is not complicated, but the most important step toward success.