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200 Words on Execution

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Roy Halladay

Pictures of execution, the game tickets, and marking great execution.

I was asked recently how do you stay motivated to do great work when there is so much work to do. I suggest identifying a way to picture “greatness”, and strive for it each day. Find something tangible, easy, and personal for YOU to relate to.

How do I do it? Like a 12 year old kid, I have a hero on my desk. Roy Halladay, the ace pitcher of the Philadelphia Phillies. In 2010, Roy pitched a perfect game on May 29th, and a no hitter on October 26th.

There are 27 outs in a baseball game. A “perfect game” is when the pitcher executes an out for every single batter. 27 for 27. In 135 years, this has been done 20 times. A “no hitter” is when the pitcher executed so no batter could get a hit. There have only been 272 no hitters. He did BOTH in ONE season. Over 578,000 major league baseball games have been played and 0.05% resulted in a no hitter or perfect game.

People know great execution when they see it – and so will you. What vision will motivate you to get that performance out of your work?

Seth and Amy say “One Approach Across all Recruiting….Really!?!”

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I love that bit that Seth Myers does. Its even better when Amy Poehler gets in the act. If you are not Saturday Night Live fans, there is a skit that is done during the Weekend Update (a spoof on the nightly news) where the anchors review the news of the week by calling out the intentions or actions of celebrities, politicians and leaders that were broadcast that week, and by asking “Really!?!”

Its good comedy, because it points fun at how people tend to say things, do things, or attempt to do things that are either impossible, not really viable, a waste of time, or have little return.

Its budget season already, and there are talks of companies on the push for enterprise wide change – again. But before you go down the road with the great conversation “we have to do recruiting one way, and have one process” – I suggest you do a vision analysis.

Answer each of these using a traffic light
NO = RED
MAYBE/SOMEWHAT = AMBER
YES = GREEN 

Q1: have you performed a risk analysis?

Q2: does management really know the hiring manager problem and can define it?

Q3: was a worst case analysis on vision achievement, adoption, and realization performed?

Q4: have you developed a prototype within your proposed constraints, and made adjustments such that it can be replicated within those constraints?

Q5: will the vision take less than 12 months to fully install, realize, and adopt?

Q6: do you have an exit strategy from the vision if failure occurs or is imminent?

Q7: does the firm have a success rate of 67% or more with similar projects at an enterprise level? Remember failure means over budget, too many resources, or behind schedule (getting it done is assumed).

Q8: did you revisit similar attempts for enterprise wide HR change, and analyze the holes in those plans, and recalibrate this vision?

The Vision should go through these questions (plus another 40) without having red all over the board. There are over hundreds of assets like this in a well planned project, but if you can’t get past just these 8 during your vision stage without having red all over the paper, then all I can say to you is “Really!?!”

Actually – its just means you need to mitigate risks and make some changes before you move forward, but still…really!?!