Create Value For Your Company…Execute!

Below is a guest blog post from Nicole Bickett of VisionBridge:

I saw this quote in this month’s Inc magazine and loved it:

“It’s so funny when I hear people being protective of ideas.  (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)…The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.  The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.  That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.  I’m not interested until I see their execution.”
-Derek Sivers

We’ve probably all done it…thought of a business idea and never acted on it and then saw someone else become successful with it.  Wonder what they did differently?

All the greatest ideas in the world need to be taken down to the executable level.  To take action on your business ideas and strategies, there obviously need to be tasks associated with them.  The compilation of those tasks into repeatable and predictable tasks and results are business systems.

For example, if you need 4 new clients a month, how many sales meetings do you need to have?  How many contacts do you need to meet to get a sales meeting?  Are you making those contacts week after week and keeping your team accountable to doing the same?  How are you tracking it?  These are crucial to your business.

Each business will have different numbers for the example above.  The system you use for these types of tasks is your business’ unique DNA.  Build your unique systems in the beginning and change and refine as you go.  Then continue to execute, measure, and refine.  This is what will create value for your organization now and in the future.

I just read that McDonald’s first franchise operations manual was 15 pages long.  Can you imagine how long it is now?  Many volumes of hundreds of pages.  That’s the perfect example of building, executing, measuring, and refining.  And their idea was as simple as hamburgers.

Nicole Bickett owns VisionBridge, a firm specializing in building, documenting, and improving business systems for companies.  Find out more about her at www.visionbridgeinc.com.