3rd Key Shift: Individual Productivity to Human Execution System

"There is no greater waste of time than doing efficiently that should never have been done." -- Peter Drucker

There are 4 major shifts that a startup needs to make in order to be successful in the scaling-up journey. The 3rd Shift is from Individual Productivity to Human Execution System.

When you are a startup, it is important that everyone is productive, but once you have a relatively large mass of human beings, it's about making sure that the company is productive. Most companies fail to cascade their strategy into their organisation, because they don't build their Human Execution System. It's easier to build one when you have 100 people than when you have 1000.

Watch this short 3 mins video that talks about this shift...

TRANSCRIPT:

Moving from Individual Productivity to Scalable Human Execution Systems.

Now that you know your Strategy, you will need to know how to execute it with your human execution systems. Most companies fail to cascade their strategy, because they fail to build a human execution system. 

To have a human execution system is to have a rapidly growing number of engaged human beings, working together and committed to overcoming challenges so as to consistently hit 90 day priorities that will move the company towards its BHAG as efficiently as possible. 

Since a company is really just “human beings doing things”, and since you cannot control or change people, you’ll need to curate this social system so that they will blossom. And this does not necessarily mean you need to have ping pong tables or beers in the fridge. 

As a company grows, it gets more difficult to get the right balance of enough stability to get things done and the flexibility and agility to be able to change. It is definitely easier to install a human execution system when you have 100 people, than when you have 1000, as it ensures that even when your goals or strategy change, when you scale from 10 million to 100 million, this system will ensure that your teams still have the habits and ability to execute with confidence and speed. 

Here are 4 examples when your human execution system is not working:

1. You have motivated, inspired people who are committed and all working very hard, but the results you desire are constantly out of reach, or inconsistent. All working more and full of activity but not reaching goals, or there aren't enough resources to get things done. 

2. You have committed people, all really happy and busy, but the cash is running thin, and it seems like not everyone is pulling their weight. 

3. It is getting slower and more difficult to make things happen: the communication problems are being exacerbated, rework is increasing due to miscommunication, schedules are slipping, and everyone is working hard, but in their own groups or in different directions. 

4. With a constant stream of new recruits coming, it is beginning to feel like a different company, and you spend more time co-ordinating and organising than getting things done, or end up constantly reinventing the wheel of how things get done around here. 

To build a human execution system, you need 4 key ingredients of structure, process, culture and accountability.  

• With anything that has scale, human beings need structure & process to help them navigate through complexity to know who and what they need to do to get things done in a new environment: confusion only creates unnecessary delay. In order for improvements to happen, you need to have a baseline to measure against.

• You can have a fantasy or wishlist about your company on your website or how to get things done on your intranet, but culture is how you “REALLY” behave and how things “ACTUALLY” get done around here. If the gap between your fantasy and the reality is big and you can't do what you say is important, then how can you get people to execute your strategy? So, work on your reality, not your fantasy.

• Another word for accountability is ownership, and it's a psychological state and not a logical one. If you observe how someone behaves differently when they take care of their own baby as compared to someone else's baby, you will be able to see whether a person is acting with ownership or not. It's great when it happens, because it means that the metaphorical monkey is off your back and they are able to take responsibility for their own tasks.

However, having these 4 ingredients is not enough: you will need to put them together through the 3 execution disciplines in an integrated manner to create your human execution system. So, ask yourself: are you building a human execution system to execute your strategy?