Can You Deliver?

Strategy, leadership, innovation, and marketability … all are crucial to business success; however, can your business execute?

Small business owners normally spend countless hours organizing business plans and marketing plans without considering if they can execute the plan. Creating a plan—whatever type of plan—should be your game plan to achieve your vision. This requires one of the most important skills of any business: Execution.

What is execution? In business, it’s doing what you say you’re going to do when you’re supposed to do it. Although, execution is not just about doing what you say you’re going to do; it also about being realistic about your business in all areas including your own skill sets; it’s about having a “business mindset” so that you can take action; and lastly it’s about creating a success team that has execution integrated into their skill set.

So how do you begin incorporating execution into your business? Here are five areas to start with:

1. Face reality. Getting real about your business is the first step to execution. It sounds simple, but it’s hard for most people in general because we spend a lot of time in denial. Denial is a way to make life easier and comfortable.

For instance, I recently asked one of my clients this question, “How do you plan to hit your monthly targets?” His answer, “By incorporating a strong marketing strategy.” This answer illustrates that this client was trying to tell me what I wanted to hear instead of dealing with reality—he didn’t know the answer. This is denial. The answer should’ve been, “I don’t know; can you help me figure it out?” This is reality.

If you learn how to do the right things right, your business will execute consistently.

3. Get rid of your excess baggage. I say excess because we are human and we all have some degree of baggage whether its family challenges or internal challenges. If the baggage is exceeding your emotional capacity, you have excess. Excess baggage may include: negative self-talk, intentional fear, procrastination, laziness—the list can go on.

The excess baggage can take on many forms and it will impede you from executing the vision. To begin peeling off those excess layers of baggage, learn the power of focus.

Another way to look at it: your competition is preying upon your weaknesses. They know what your weaknesses are; do you?

5. Learn the art of simplicity. Instead of thinking for ourselves, we rely on the thinking of others. For example, most of you probably know everything that I’m touching on in this article to some degree. I’m really not giving you foreign information—we just aren’t used to trusting our instincts. We feel that the more complex path or complex answer must be right. The simple path or simple answer just can’t be, “It can’t be this simple … can it?” The answer is yes, it can be that simple.

As you evaluate and manage these five areas, execution will present itself and clarity will take over. Just remember: don’t learn the tricks of the trade—learn the trade; if you do, you will execute consistently and build a profitable business with longevity.