Execution and Leadership

From day one, we’ve been writing about what leaders do to make a difference in managing safety performance. The work as the leader begins with planning: establishing processes, policies, procedures, programs and standards. Later it’s evaluating: comparing how performance matches desired results. When gaps are found, adjustments are made.

As to what goes on between planning and evaluating, that’s a matter of execution.

Planning, executing, evaluating and adjusting: together the four functions represent the “virtuous cycle” of the management process. 

The process never ends.

Execution

As these four management functions play out in industrial operations the world over, things seem simple enough. The primary role of the executive is planning and oversight; execution is relegated to those well down the chain of command. It does make you wonder what the person who first coined the term “executive” was thinking. Chief Architect might have been the better choice; construction is done elsewhere.

Back in the day when I had a management job in operations, if one of our good operators screwed up and put product where it was not supposed to go, we’d get a call from top management. That’s oversight. When it was one particular division president on the phone – a PhD, by the way – the only thing he’d ever ask was, “Who’d you shoot?”  Give him a name, and Dr. Nate would go away happy; no further questions asked.

More the executioner than executive.

Things like that make you want to ask how big a deal execution really is – to the executive. Often it feels incidental to the job of running the business; more distraction than core competency. Reality is exactly opposite: execution creates the product or service and how well that is done determines results. Sure, a better strategy might produce better results, but those results will be only as good as is its execution. There is no escaping execution.

Moreover, planning and evaluating are the easy part: they’re done on paper and take place in conference rooms.

Handing over the plans, policies, procedures, programs and equipment to those responsible for execution is predictably where things start going haywire. Figuring out how to prevent that from happening – and if it does, figuring out how to keep it from happening again – represents the work of those responsible for execution, from the front-line supervisor to the top executive.

That understanding is often missing in action. You need not take my word for that: ask the former CEO’s for two publicly traded companies, Boeing and Starbucks. They will tell you about the common element linking the problems making airplanes and coffee that cost them their jobs: execution. For whatever reason (or reasons) followers of theirs, well down in the chain of command, were not up to the task of carrying out their processes. 

Long story short, the top executives couldn’t figure out how to prevent that from happening. 

Driving execution is the job of the executive and the fundamental challenge of leadership. Nowhere is that challenge greater than for safety, where every single person in the business is constantly exposed to things perfectly capable of harming them.

Complexity

Defining execution is easy: it’s simply doing. Start doing something – anything, really – and that’s the point where things start getting complicated. The person who first pointed out that “if you think something’s easy, try doing it yourself” undoubtedly spoke from first-hand experience.

Take something as simple as ordering a cup of coffee. At the counter at Starbucks, when the customer orders coffee in all its usual variations – a tall decaf cappuccino, as one favorite example – on the other side of the counter stands the barista who routinely deals with a thousand permutations for a cup of coffee. COVID came along, the geniuses at HQ pulled the crème and sugar station, adding two more variables to the equation: sweetener and creamer, and how much of each.

Shocking development: now it takes forever to get a cup of coffee. 

The business school term of art for that execution problem is “throughput.” Rather than wait twenty minutes, the customer decides to skip the coffee. The throughput problem cost Starbuck’s CEO his job.

My Starbucks now has an electronic status board, showing work in progress. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s one more thing for somebody to manage, and doesn’t do a thing to solve the execution problem of getting the coffee to the customer fast.

Doing is tough. But there is one notable exception: being a critic. That’s easy: all that’s required is criticism, a favorite pastime of many of us, myself included. That may turn out to explain at least part of the execution challenge: management’s evaluation, poorly executed.

On the one hand, critique is a management function, and a vital one, as evaluating experience is part of the improvement loop. On the other hand, poor performance of oversight injects an additional set of problems into the process. “Who’d you shoot?” makes that point.

I suspect if those who make the plans had to work their plans, the process of review and evaluation – the critique – would go a lot differently, starting with the recognition of complexity. Boss, with so many things going on all at once, it is brutally tough to do everything right. And actually doing it right takes forever, and leaves the customer unhappy. 

When that’s a fair and accurate description of reality, guess who’s problem that is to fix?

The executive.

Wisdom

Dealing intelligently with the performance failures of the individual and the group in these complex situations calls for wisdom. Honestly, now: who doesn’t understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom? 

Not unlike business, wisdom is principally a matter of execution. Wisdom is defined as the application of knowledge to a complex situation. Dr. Nate was a very smart guy, but come time to deal with failure, he elected to check his brain at the coat rack outside the conference room. Perhaps his choice was deliberate: with so many other tough business issues competing for his time and energy, why bother trying to understand, let alone solve, what seems like some dinky little on-off problem?

He might have been right. But what if what looks like a small, one-off problem might just be early evidence there’s s big problem brewing?

You might disagree, but I’m equally inclined to lump those who are of the habit of trying to solve every problem by commissioning an engineering project in the same category. Instead of “Who did you shoot?” their operative question typically goes “How do we buy a solution?” Particularly a solution that would seem to engineer out the human from the process.

Sometimes an expensive solution and a re-work of the process is what’s called for. But not always.

See what I mean about wisdom?

It seems to me those leaders in operations who can be described as truly possessing wisdom have a knack for knowing what problems to take seriously, and, when they do, take them on in a very serious way. 

A knack? 

If there weren’t some kind of knack involved, everyone with knowledge would possess wisdom.

Taking Execution Seriously

Time to connect up the dots, not that you do not already know what you are about to read.

First things first: business and safety performance are a function of execution: what is done, and how well things are done. Yes, there can be cases where failure was a function of a terrible plan fabulously executed, but they’re pretty rare. As a practical matter, your plans and processes for safety aren’t awful. 

So, if you’re going to obsess on something, make it execution.

Everyone in a management position owns execution: it’s part and parcel of being responsible for the work of others. Their execution is your execution; their shortcomings yours. 

Remember that when you’re dealing with failure.

Unless you employ an army of robots, execution is a people process. You have plenty of experience dealing with people, you know exactly what to expect from people tasked with execution. 

But, if you think problems with execution done by people can never be managed well, you need to look around. There always have been, are now, and always will be some leaders and some organizations that are far better than their peers at execution.

Finally, if you are of the view that sooner or later, there will be problems with execution, you are thinking well. The best case is when the problems are small ones. 

The Last Word

I suppose we would have not gotten it wrong had we stated the three things that most determine execution are leadership, leadership and leadership.

Paul Balmert
February 2025