Strategy without Execution = Talking


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The Monday MOVE Idea

Each Monday until the launch of my upcoming book MOVE, I’ll be sharing an important idea from the book. This week:

Strategy without Exectuion = Talking

A company can be really clear about what it wants to accomplish, yet struggle to articulate the specific tasks that will make those goals come true.

To move your team from talking about important stuff in a vague way, to actually making progress on these things in a real way, the first step is to realize that you are stuck because you are still only Talking.

People will come to meetings with lots of insight and data. They will always be ready to shed more light on the problem, provide detail, benchmarks, and customer examples. They will have lots of smart stuff to say.

Describing the “Situation”

The most effective way I have found to break through this is to recognize that you are stuck talking about the Situation. It’s vitally important as a leader to recognize when your team is falling into the pattern of accepting smart sounding ideas and inputs as value-add, instead of measurable forward progress.

Situation discussions describe: What we are doing, what the market is doing, what the competitors are doing, what the investors are saying, what the problems are, what the costs are, what the customers are demanding, what the changes in business model are causing, what the opportunities are, what the employees are doing and not doing…

Situation discussions don’t go anywhere — they only gather more detail.

Situation discussions are basically: Collectively admiring the problem.

Situation vs. Outcome

The way to break through this type of stall is to train your team to catch yourselves having a situation discussion, and then say, “Let’s stop talking about the Situation and let’s try to define an Outcome that we want to achieve”. Outcome discussions lead to actions.

Read MOVE

I’m really excited to share examples of moving from Situation Discussions to Outcome Discussions and all the tools I put in my upcoming book MOVE to help you get your team to execute your strategy more decisively — including building your own confidence and courage as a leader.

MOVE will be available in February, but you can download a free preview now or pre-order your copy now.
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About Patty
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Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or Facebook, or read her books RISE and MOVE.


Why I left my corporate career...
Good Measures and Bad Measures: The Monday MOVE Idea
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