In our last blog we began discussing the Visionary component of The Execution of a Vision.  Now we will discuss Execution. When it comes to learning about leadership, teams, techniques and strategy there are an enormous number of resources available.  Reading and research is a good start, but it will all be meaningless unless you aggressively apply the insights you have gathered from these resources.

No, I don’t mean the putting to death of a vision, although ironically the doom of many visionary business strategies is because of lack of execution.  Confused yet?  I recently read an excellent article, in Fast company, which reminds me of many, if not all, of the things we emphasize in our programs. Vision is the “why” of our business, while execution is the “how” and “what” with tenacious follow through.  “When teams Form and Storm, execution must be engraved in the Norms in order to Perform.” Tuckman Model, Dr. Bruce Tuckman

The publishers of Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s book, The Gold Standard: Building a World-class Team, tease the newly published book with these words: “Coach K had to work with huge egos and personal rivalries in order to create an American team that could win against the best competition in the world and restore Team USA to the gold standard of basketball.” Wow, take out a few words and I’ll wager that sounds like a familiar challenge.

Reading the article in the current issue of Personnel Today got me thinking:  how many ways are there to do team building?  Helen Williams’ experience taking fencing lessons with her editorial team makes it clear the answer is probably infinite.