Right People, Doing the Right Things, Right - Part 2

Part 2 of Step #6 - in the 20 Steps to Build a Great Business

Right People, Doing the Right Things, Right

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"Goals without Actions are dreams. Actions without Goals are chaos."

- Japanese Proverb

Step #6 is Right People, Doing the right things, Right.  Last weeks post was "Right People" - now we will discuss doing the "Right Things".

One of my favorite quotes (above) - I've been using it for 7-8 years now - provides the best insight I can find as to why most businesses seem to be in chaos all day. Steven Covey called it "the urgent getting in the way of important."

How do we define what ownership and A Players should be working on? What are the Right Actions/Rocks they should be focusing on?

It all starts with Goals, SMART Goals. Let me tell you a quick story.

A client of mine was setting goals with me for the coming year. He was setting SMART Goals - numbers and metrics - for his company. I asked him about new Ideal Customers and he replied, "we brought on 100 this year so next year we

will bring in 120" (notice the commitment to achieving the goal). Before I could say anything, the Sales Manager said, "well to get 120 new Ideal Customers we need to do 1..,2..3..., (Actions/Rocks)", and before he could finish the Operations Manager said, "to support that we need to 1., 2., 3." One goal and we produced 6 or 7 Actions/Rocks that were, suddenly, prioritized. Those are the Right Things to assign one person and make them accountable for each one, and one by one finish, execute.

Warning:

You can't do them all at once. My experience says 2 Rocks per quarter per employee is about the maximum. If you assign more it is overwhelming and nothing gets finished. Each Rock has only one person accountable for it. They can use other resources and people but they are accountable for it being completed. More on how we track this progress and ensure we finish/execute in future posts.