All football managers tell their teams, it doesn’t matter how many times you try to score. It only counts when the ball goes over the line. Entrepreneurs understand this and hence develop what others may call perseverance, focus or passion. Bottom line - ideas are great, execution is what counts. 

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The successful entrepreneur is able to consider both future and present with equal intensity and focus. So, while he dreams up the Business Frame, he also works tirelessly and furiously; staying close to the construction of the business as it is built. He is keen to ensure every detail matches the thing of beauty he dreams of. And, typically, he is a man in a hurry! 

 

Bestselling Authors, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan have a lot to say about execution. As they put it, “execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it”. They rightly identify people, strategy, and operations as the three core processes of every business. “Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a ’vision’ and leaving the work of carrying it out to others.” 

 

Bossidy and Charan identify seven Building Blocks of Execution that are worth remembering:

• Know your people and your business

• Insist on realism

• Set clear goals and priorities

• Follow-through

• Reward the doers

• Expand people’s capabilities

• Know yourself

 

A final word of suggestion to entrepreneurs and Leaders, alike – you need to act before having all the information at hand. Let me share what General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, says in response to situations like this;

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“My own experience is that you get as much information as you can and then you pay attention to your intuition, to your informed instinct. Sometimes what my analytical mind says to me is not what I’ll do. Generally, you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometimes after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.”