“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” - Guy Kawasaki
By coaching workers that range from junior employees through to the most senior executives, I get to see the broad spectrums that vary from those who struggle to perform through to those who are absolute high achievers. What I do know is age and experience have no correlation whatsoever to performance. The biggest difference comes down to how well ideas and plans are implemented.
Now I have to admit I love a good plan. It’s the side to me that prefers to be organised, have a sense of direction and connect purpose to what I’m doing each day. In the business world we should plan for the proactive work but also the reactive tasks that tend to pop up that we need to respond to. We may not know when these specific reactive tasks will occur, but rule of thumb we can estimate a percentage of our week that will be consumed by them. The percentage we set aside will vary by the very nature of our role.
For quite a while I was puzzled why some people were able to consistently do what they said they would, while others didn’t. It had nothing to do with knowing the difference between right or wrong or good and bad because almost everyone knew what they had to do and had some desire to do it. The difference was their work methods caused them not to do it.
I also observed how easy it was to default to excuses such as:
“I was too busy”
“There wasn’t enough time”
Post-mortems were like hearing a common disease spreading of could have, would have, should have….
While I appreciate some people might be busier than others, excuses like these are copping out from the responsibility. The core of the issue more so relates to how we:
Aren’t accountable – to the impact of not actioning
Don’t prioritise – focusing on the most important
Plan poorly – a good plan that’s achievable is necessary
Maximise our energy – it makes sense to action our high impact important work when our energy levels are high
Procrastinate – be mindful if you’re deferring taking action
We need to have some semblance of a plan to help us achieve our targeted outcomes. Make sure your plan is realistic and stop making excuses if you don’t achieve it. The ball’s in your court to action it……