The Art of Execution

By Kristen Ludwig, Marketing Coordinator, Goldenberg Rosenthal, LLP

Marketing professionals work hard to create effective marketing plans that can help their firms reach new heights, only to see them never implemented fully. Referring to execution as the gap between strategies and results, AAM Summit presenter August Aquila shared four key disciplines to ensure plans are carried out in his program Execution: The Forgotten Discipline. As Director of Practice Management Consulting for The Growth Partnership, Aquila is a 24-year veteran of management and marketing consulting. His presentation focused on accomplishing marketing goals by creating team buy-in with a complete process for establishing goals, setting action steps, and demanding accountability. The first discipline, Focus on the Wildly Important, asks a firm to narrow its goals. Today in business, as in life, we are all multi-tasking with mixed results. Aquila stressed that focusing on doing fewer things more effectively will improve results drastically. The old way of thinking sets 6-10 goals for a team to accomplish each year. Under this discipline, teams determine two to three wildly important goals (WIGs) for the year. WIGs are defined as goals that make all the difference. Failure to achieve them renders any of our other achievements inconsequential. To determine your firms WIGs, your team members should get together to perform a goals assessment. Potential goals should be listed on a sheet, then rated on a scale of -1 to 4 (4 being a high positive impact, 0 being no impact and -1 being a negative impact) according to criteria in three areas: Economic (grows revenue, reduces costs, improves cash flow/profitability, etc.) Strategic (directly supports firms goals, leverages core competencies, increases competitive advantage, increases market strength, etc.) Stakeholder (increases customer loyalty, ignites the passion and energy of our people) has favorable impact on suppliers, partners, investors) In addition, the team should also do what Aquila calls a gut check to determine how the goal stands up to the question Are we facing the brutal realities? Using the score totals and the gut check, the team then checks off the two or three goals that are truly the most important ones. This process will probably set off robust discussions over differing scores, which is great for talking through the firms priorities and coming up with goals that everyone buys into. With your WIGs established, it is time to move on to the second discipline, Creating a Compelling Scorecard. While some believe that once a goal is communicated, people

know the firm is serious about it, Aquila argues that were not really serious about a goal until we start keeping score. In fact, some firms choose to factor performance in these areas into evaluations and/or compensation to encourage active participation. Creating a system to gage progress encourages accountability in your firm. What exactly should you measure? That has to be determined in much the same way your goals are. Lagging measures provide your team with a historical look at past performance, such as won proposals. Leading measures on the other hand are predictive indicators of future results, and can include the number of opportunities or proposals in the pipeline. When evaluating potential measures, use a credibility checklist for the objective. Does the measure accurately track progress toward the goal? Does it drive the right behaviors? Is it truly achievable? Does it have no unintended consequences? Does the value of measuring exceed the cost of measuring? If the measure holds up to this process, it should be used. The third discipline is Translate Goals Into Action Steps. To achieve goals you have never achieved before, Aquila says that you need to start doing things you have never done before. This means getting your team to think critically, decide what should be done differently, and then do it. Its easier said than done to be sure, but with commitment, this can be accomplished. Aquila suggests thinking new and better as the first step in going from goals to actions. This means identifying pockets of excellence the areas of your firm where WIGs are consistently achieved - and discovering what critical behaviors these superior performers exhibit. The team should also create it from imagination, deciding what steps you would take in a barrier-free world to accomplish your goals, and figuring out if any of these ideal behaviors are doable right now. Planning is another vital part of this process. Aquila encouraged his audience to happen to your week, dont let your week happen to you. By breaking goals down into smaller, achievable tasks, you will make progress towards the final goal each day. Have your team schedule time into each day or week to accomplish these tasks, and make sure to keep this appointment as if it was a regular business meeting. A great weekly planning strategy is to plug the objective back into the first discipline goal setting process. Ask yourself what are some things I could do this week to move our goal forward and then narrow that list to the three most significant items. You will make progress on your goals consistently if you commit to doing this each week. The fourth discipline is the trickiest of all: Hold Each Other Accountable. Knowing others are counting on you raises each team members level of commitment. Aquila recommends a teambuilding activity using a scale of commitment to gage how people feel about the teams commitment and their own. Ranging from rebellion/malicious obedience on the negative side of the spectrum to heartfelt commitment/creative excitement on the positive end, youll find that individual scores will always be higher than team scores. This tool will help get more honest answers from the team, and should

a team member rank at the negative end of the scale, it would be wise to remove them. These people will only undermine the team and prevent goals from being achieved. Maintaining commitment to the goal requires both accountability and frequent team engagement. A key to this level of engagement is to create a positive meeting experience. Engaged, committed team members should not dread meeting with each other. Meetings should be held regularly and often (at least every other week) and revolve around your WIGs. Talking about everything under the sun slows down progress and sends the agenda off on tangents it cant recover from. Creating a space where there is clear accountability, successes are celebrated, failures and struggles are reported openly, and robust brainstorming and problem-solving occur is a challenge, but it is possible. If people commit to helping each other with their tasks and participate in the lively exchange of ideas above, they will leave each meeting energized and ready to take on the work ahead. Driving this team approach to goal setting and achievement is a monumental task for marketers, but with a disciplined approach, the results will quickly become apparent and the rewards will be great. For further reading on the topic, Aquila suggests Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, as well as The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen R. Covey.
August Aquila is the Director of Practice Management Consulting for The Growth Partnership, Inc. A leading authority in areas of strategic planning, pay for performance compensation and success planning, Aquila is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences. He is the co-author of Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Todays Professional Services Firm (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). Accounting Today selected him as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting, and he was inducted into the AAM Hall of Fame in 2003. He can be reached at aaquila@thegrowthpartnership.com. Kristen Ludwig is the Marketing Coordinator for Goldenberg Rosenthal, LLP, ranked as one of the Top 100 CPA firms in the U.S. She has over eight years of experience in marketing, communications and public relations. Kristen may be reached at kludwig@grgrp.com.