The Best Investment You Can Make in Your Business or Organization

If you could make one commitment (call it a wish or command) into your business or organization--something that would be very beneficial and guaranteed to accomplish results--something like; motivating your people, effectively changing your culture, achieving your bottom line and propelling your values and aspirations--something big on that order. What would it be?

Perhaps you would wish for a new, "can't miss" marketing plan or an infusion of much needed capital? How about resignation letters from all those managers on your team that are not very productive? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to "rub the lamp" and have that answer you've been looking for materialize before your eyes, fully implemented and delivering results for you? Having that experience, in "supernatural" phenomena-like fashion would really be great but, this isn't "Field of Dreams" and it's certainly not Hollywood, so how does one go about making great things happen in their business while still remaining grounded in reality?

Business and management sage, Peter Drucker once said, " We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” In this quote, Drucker was right on about teaching people how to learn, as it is perhaps the single greatest attribute that someone can give to someone else--not only to stimulate perpetual learning but in recognition of the fact that all things in business can and will always change. Embracing that concept on its own is fundamental to business achievement and success.

Take for example, hiring practices. Organizations take great pains to hire, train and develop individuals with great educational backgrounds, widely recognized levels of experience, the ability to be a good fit culturally and then beyond that, they most likely put candidates through a battery of additional tests to determine their potential level of success within particular jobs and fields. All of these practices are things that I am sure reasonable people would agree upon as "good to do" when calculating an important hiring decision.

So here's the kicker. With all the preparation, precaution and back-end analysis, why is it that Gallup has found that businesses and organizations make the wrong hiring decision 82% of the time and shockingly further note, that only one out of ten managers possess the talent required to actually manage!

If that doesn't depress you, cheer up as it's not all bad news; Gallup's studies have additionally found that the number "vaults" to two in ten when a company applies additional coaching, development and training to the individual manager. Big whoop!

Getting effective, productive managers in place is one problem, another is making the assumption that managers (once on the job) actually know how to manage, lead, motivate and how to execute with a team against a plan or strategy. So, what is a company to do with the odds seemingly stacked against them? Well......we do what most companies would do--defer to our human resource personnel for a solution; an arrow from the quiver, a club from the bag, a tool from the tool box. We answer the challenge with a one size fits all intervention that potentially helps and may solve some issues but, doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

Senior executives routinely and mistakenly assign responsibility for management development to already overworked and underappreciated HR personnel, when the root cause of the problem is that we assume that managers already know how to do the things we expect them to do, primarily because well, we call them "managers". Just carrying the title doesn't get business results and doesn't mean the individual knows how to contribute in order to get the company to its annual goals. Countless other examples exist where the methodology is more concrete, utilizing goal setting and defining responsibilities but failure still persists. Why???????

Because executives tend to treat strategic planning like a task, they often overlook the process of execution and what it means to their business and teams. Understanding that execution drives strategy, which causes you to address strategy, is a critical application for managerial talent and best explains the gap in individual success. You can have the smartest people, the most emotionally aware and the most well grounded in personality traits within your ranks, but it means nothing if you can't tie individual performance to desired results. When we set individual goals for managers out in the field or at their company desk and we don't tie them to the strategic initiatives of the business--then we have created a chasm that leaves the manager feeling disconnected and worse yet, left to their own devices (skills) in terms of getting things done. Again, I ask why?

You see, execution is a process and moreover a system for "how things get done". It involves removing guesswork in the work role model and keeps individual managers relevant and engaged in whatever they may be doing. It is about building leaders at every level of the organization so that teamwork, creativity and discovery flourish. It ensures consistent communications throughout the organization, built upon a common language that is understood and effectively utilized by all, and most importantly, it defines success for the company this year--something that needs to be universally accepted and acknowledged by each manager. Leadership and operating teams need to own "how they execute" and be responsible for the outcomes that occur. If they don't, then they are needlessly looking to blame other factors which is akin to treating the symptoms and not finding the cure.

So if you are still "looking for that wish to be granted" or waiting on "divine intervention" stop it! You can't find the solution where it cannot be found. Use the tools that HR provides but, make sure they are connected to your strategy and aligned with all of your team efforts. Take the time to understand what a connected system of execution management can do for you, your teams and your business. It may be the single most important investment that you make in your business in your lifetime.