FIT Book Intro (snippit)

In this special edition of the Weekly Transformation Newsletter, we celebrate the release of the game-changing book, FIT: The Simple Science of Achieving Strategic Goals. The book is now available on amazon in both hardcover and ebook formats at this link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Calvin-L.-Williams/author/B0BQ7QRRLN?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Here's the snippit of the intro:

On September 12, 1962, US President John F. Kennedy stood before an anxious crowd of 35,000 people at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and made a statement that would start a chain of events that transformed life on earth as we know it. On this day, JFK set the incredible goal of sending a man to the moon and back by 1970.

The world was stunned, shocked to hear such a bold declaration. Some stood in awe, inspired that we might soon sail the silent sea and conquer space travel. Some scoffed in disbelief because we, as a species, did not have what it took to achieve such an impossible goal. The skeptics were right; however, there was something that they did not understand. They could not see that the mission’s success was not only in reaching its destination but in the many small victories along the journey. They could not see that by simply trying our best to overcome the many obstacles while doing the seemingly impossible, we would have already succeeded.

“We choose to go to the moon,”2 Kennedy explained. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”2 The crowd erupted in cheers suddenly thereafter.

Something is only hard for us because we are unfit. This is a book about strategy execution, which is synonymous with the achievement of important and collective goals. It is about managing significant achievement at scale. We chose the moonshot to illustrate what it takes to achieve impossible things since it may just be the most outstanding achievement in the history of humankind. We will refer to it frequently throughout the book to show how we, as leaders, can apply the science of achieving challenging collective goals, or strategy execution, to do the impossible with our organizations.

Most companies are notoriously bad at executing strategy. This is mainly due to a lack of focus on what’s most important to improve and a low sense of urgency for action. People struggle to prioritize important, long-term, strategic efforts against the crisis of the day. As a result, they fail to reach their growth potential. Many companies do not even bother to set goals. Those that do often apply a rigid waterfall-style approach to strategic planning and execution, which will be discussed in detail in this book. Their strategic plans are so cumbersome to create and take so long to execute that they become obsolete before they are completed. As a result, strategic planning becomes more of a thought exercise for executives to imagine what would be possible if the company could get its act together.

Organizations produce the results that they are currently fit to generate. If they wish to produce better results, they must first become fit to do so. This starts with setting and aligning goals, or strategy, and then executing them. Upon setting a goal, the need for Continuous Improvement is created. Likewise, if no goal requires an organization to get better to achieve, there is no need for improvement. In setting a goal that stretches the organization’s existing capabilities, leaders initiate a journey that will require advancement in science, technology, engineering, and talent that would otherwise remain stagnant.

Many organizations fail to set goals that inspire transformation. Instead, they settle for a 10% improvement that comes mainly from doing the same thing but a little better. This tendency to “play it safe” only suppresses the potential of the people, processes, and technologies that make up the company. It sends a very uninspiring message of “don’t expect much from us.” Some companies have built up enormous inventories of talent and genius, only to saddle them into mediocrity with weak goals and a lack of ambition at the top. Why not dream bigger? Why haven’t the world’s largest food producers ended world hunger? Why haven’t the world’s most profitable drug makers ended cancer and other chronic illnesses? Why are people on earth still living without clean drinking water? If we can put a man on the moon and back, it seems that we should have no trouble solving these more basic humanitarian problems here on earth.

This book is being written on the 60th anniversary of JFK’s declaration of the moon mission. It’s been 50 years since a human has been to the moon and quiet quitting is the hottest trending topic on social media. Meanwhile, Lean and other Continuous Improvement initiatives fail at an alarming rate, with a lack of leadership support being cited as the leading cause. Something is amiss, and this book exposes the problem and the solution.

The way companies manage goal achievement does not fit the realities of the times and is highly ineffective, resulting in abysmally low goal attainment rates. Commonly used approaches are overly complicated and lack scalability. The solution is a simple process called FIT. It is the fundamental improvement process that humans and all other animals have used since the beginning of time to achieve their goals. FIT was defined based on the collective learnings of a century of Scientific Management and decades of hands-on experience working inside some of the world’s leading companies like Nestle, Mars, the Military Industrial Base, the Clorox Company, and several others to enable more successful achievement of corporate goals. It is simple enough to learn and do without much training, which is what makes the process so scalable. People have already been doing it their entire lives.

FIT is an acronym that stands for Focus, Iterate, and Track. This is the atomic-level process for improving what matters most. Focusing on what’s most important to improve ensures that improvement effort has the highest and best return. Iterating toward the Goal maximizes learning and development while ensuring the quality of execution. Tracking progress along the way enables an objective, data-driven assessment of progress. The term Goal in this context represents an objective that establishes the direction, distance, and deadline for improvement as part of the FIT process. It is capitalized throughout the book to help make the distinction from goals in the general sense. Practically all skills are built this way. For example, babies learn to walk by focusing on stepping from object to object, iterating on how to take steps, and tracking how far they can walk without falling. They try, fail, try again, and do a little better but fail again. They repeat this process until they succeed. It’s that simple. Before you know it, they’re running around the house and breaking things.

We naturally achieve as a matter of survival and development; we learn to be ashamed of failure. Somewhere in life, we learn not to focus, not to iterate, and not to track progress. FIT is a routine that reinforces this primary skill so that people can apply it as appropriate to their professional and personal lives. FIT is a continuation of the work of Dr. W. Edward Deming in his effort to apply a systematic approach to Continuous Improvement called Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) or Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).18 FIT not only simplifies the continuous improvement process for a broader application but also encourages iterative learning and improvement against one’s greatest priority, adding a more strategic directive. This closes a major gap in the Continuous Improvement lexicon so that the same fundamental way of thinking translates perfectly from the C Suite to the frontlines. ?

Fit is also an adjective that means “of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose.”...

Check out the free 10-minute e-learning course on Agile Strategy Execution at: https://strategycircle.impruver.com/courses/introduction-to-agile-strategy-execution/