Extraordinary Execution

Extraordinary Execution

Since the beginning of time, humans have struggled with existential questions of the meaning of life and our existence. Over the last few months, as part of our operational support, we have hosted workshops for our portfolio companies where we challenge them on these questions for their companies. We have worked with them on how to develop a company’s aspirations and strategic goals. The aspirations include mission, vision, and values, or rather answering the questions:

• Why do you exist?
• What do you want to become?
• What values are important to provide guidance to your people?
• How are you going to strategically achieve these goals?

Most companies, and especially most software companies, do not develop clear, specific, and memorable aspirations that people can easily understand, repeat, and believe, which ultimately plays into their competitive positioning. One of the most difficult challenges is not necessarily even coming up with mission, vision, and values but rather the management team initially buying into it , committing to something, and then over communicating it to their organization.

The portfolio companies have done a great job throughout the workshops. However, one team challenge that always comes up is their ability to just commit to a statement. Even when the statements are structured with the correct components and have a sincere sentiment, companies are not satisfied. Of course, they should be striving for the best and constantly improving it before planting the stake in the ground, but from the body language it often seems more of a commitment issue. This is understandable because they are defining their identity with the gnawing fear that this forever defines who they are without the ability to evolve.

An entertaining interchange at the workshop last week:

Comment: “Well not to be clichéd here but it just, well, just doesn’t sound ‘sexy’ “

Response: “Guys, guys, you are infrastructure “… with a guffaw… “ I am not sure how you will make that sound sexy”

They, of course, wanted something a bit catchier and powerful , but even some of the best statements are ultimately great statements become of what the company has become , and thus, a positive sentiment has been tied to the statement. So the mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” would sound boring until you knew it was Google’s mission—a bit catchier now, huh? So, the companies get hung up on the wordsmithing rather than the substance behind the statement.

In order for the commitment to actually happen, time does need to be spent discussing the statement in order for the whole team to buy in. The only way this workshop is effective and impactful on the organization is if the team has built enough trust where they can openly communicate. Once they actually go through the discussion and hash it out, they can then commit to various aspirational statements. After the commitment has been made , the senior management team needs to hold one another accountable to disseminate and over communicate these ideas throughout their organization and departments that is consistent with their management rhythm. These are the harder challenges than actually creating a competitive advantage statements through aspirations and goals. This is one of the most pronounced and obvious instances when these team dynamics come up. Ultimately these are just ideas, but the more important part is after the workshop when the accountability and the execution to impact come into play. Enough said on this for today….