Deliver

Deliver Results. Fast. 

If you have ever been part of a team that got things done and loved coming to work, it was probably a team with four characteristics: clear assignments with process that made sense, ambitious goals with fair deadlines, abundant positive feedback, and peer-level accountability. Your Build to Thrive consultants promote great execution of projects through attention to these four elements, which are critical to your success.

Start with clarity and commitment

Great at execution does not mean jumping to activity before its are organized. Start with strategy to set priorities then organize the people and connect them to resources, goals and timelines. A team needs to have these elements in order to raise levels of commitment and then perform well. Agree on critical events and deadlines and only interrupt the plan when there are critical problems and super clarity on any change to that plan of attack.

All of this is especially true if you are quick to start projects without a plan and its team formation elements. Strong individual contributions will have an impact, but they rarely carry a project to completion without team participation–especially true at senior levels of management.

Agree to ambitious goals with deadlines

Stretch goals have tremendous power to focus and excite your teams. Great stretch goals tie to the organizational mission and generate high levels of engagement from team members. Set baselines and deadlines to clarify those goals. Don’t dictate the deadlines, generate them with questions like, “What might it take to accomplish this goal in four weeks rather than six weeks?” Of course too much pushing erodes trust and can break a team down. Even if you walk away from a meeting with no way to accelerate a goal, it serves to clarify and form the team.

Give lots of positive feedback

In Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution (2016), Folkman and Zenger assert that a little positive feedback will not significantly effect execution. Rather, leaders who are great at execution give a lot of positive recognition; significantly more than their peers. Yes, you need to deliver critical feedback, and you must take the time to listen and understand your employee. Be sure you have understood their perspective. Being good at execution does not mean being mean or so centered on task that you trample your team.

Recognize and resolve conflict

In high performing teams, members fully engaged with the process and goals help set the bar of high expectations for peers. Conflict is no stranger to this kink of culture. Leaders need to attend to and resolve conflict so that interpersonal trust grows. Unresolved conflict is destructive to both the individuals and to your organizational mission.