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How My Son’s Life Made Me a Better Leader (and human being)

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Two years ago, my youngest son, Drake William Norup, passed away at the age of 24.

Reflecting on the past 24 months of grieving, searching for answers, and trying to make peace with what happened, I have slowly begun to realize how much his life has changed me in both subtle and profound ways.

It has made me a better husband, father, son, friend, CEO, leader, and ultimately a better human being.

I am very grateful for these lessons.

Please don’t get me wrong. While I appreciate the life lessons, I wish it had never happened. My son’s passing is the absolute worst thing I have ever experienced in my life. I would not wish the pain and torment that my family has been through upon my worst enemy.

I would do absolutely anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to have him still with us, but that is unfortunately not how life works. No matter how much I hate it, I know that he is gone and not coming back.

It is up to me to find a positive outcome. This article is one attempt.

To honor Drake and his legacy, and perhaps help others who might be facing similar challenges, I am sharing a few of the most impactful things I have learned so far.

Life is Unpredictable

As a child, Drake was a blond haired bundle of energy. Always sweet and kind-hearted, he was also very intelligent and athletic. By the end of his senior year of high school, he had been a four-year Varsity starter in both soccer and lacrosse, and was accepted by his top university choice, California Polytechnic, in San Luis Obispo.

Everything was going perfectly according to his plan. It felt like an exciting and fulfilling new life chapter was opening up before him.

We did not know what was happening when the early symptoms began to appear. It was confusing and scary for all of us, most especially for Drake. Everything that used to be so easy for him – things like school, or socializing, or even basic self-care – became difficult, if not impossible.

What we thought was a just a case of “senioritis” and wanting to party in college, was in fact early psychosis and his failed attempts at self-medicating to calm the uneasiness and chaos in his mind.

Sadly, it took several failed attempts at college, multiple arrests, and stays at re-hab centers to figure out that he in fact did not have a substance abuse issue at all. He was suffering from a severe form of bipolar (schizoaffective disorder).

You have to dig deep on the root cause. What is visible to the world may in fact not be the real problem…

Drake’s illness was a curveball that we did not see coming. In fact, we had never imagined it even as a possibility. In this instance, I don’t think there was anything we could have done to physically prepare. However, in retrospect, I do wish that I knew it was within the realm of possible. At least then, we could have prepared ourselves emotionally for the many horrors to come.

In business and life, sometimes you have to expect the unexpected. And even if it is painful, we have to consider the worst case scenario and how we might respond. This preparation has many benefits in the middle of crisis.

Mental Illness is More Common Than We Think (and it SUCKS)

Through my research, I have learned that it is fairly common for this type of mental illness to manifest in young adults, more often men than women, and it is often triggered by a stressor like a new job, becoming a parent, or leaving home for college.

Mental illness comes in many forms and affects so many people. For lack of a better word, it absolutely SUCKS. It sucks for the family, but most of all mental illness sucks for the person afflicted. Through no fault of their own, they suffer in ways most of us cannot begin to imagine.

There is so much stigma and ignorance around mental illness in our society. Because of this Drake was also often in denial that he had it. He never stopped fighting, but he never wanted to fully admit or accept that he had a serious medical condition.

As a business leader, I have learned to speak openly with my team about my son’s experience and the importance of mental health in general. The more I listen and share, the more I have come to realize the far-reaching impacts of mental illness in our society. It touches almost every one of us in some way.

It is okay to talk about mental illness.

It is okay to take a mental health day.

It is okay to admit you need help.

You are not alone.

Live Each Day to the Fullest

All of this reinforces the old truism that life is so very short.

Most of us take our daily lives for granted. For the last six years of his life, most days were a hard struggle for Drake. I hope my writing today will serve as a reminder to be thankful, to love one another, and live each day to the fullest. That is truly what Drake tried to do.

I am thankful for my wife, my other son, my family, my friends, and my work colleagues. I am also thankful for my health, and the opportunity I have been given to lead a great company.

Each day, I try to do something positive that expresses my gratitude for my life and all the people in it.

Remain Optimistic

Everything good in life is worth fighting for.

The summer before his senior year of high school, I went with my son to a traveling lacrosse team tryout. These were top players who had been invited from all around the San Francisco Bay Area, all of whom wanted to play lacrosse in college.

Drake was thin and wiry, most of them were huge. When we arrived, he took one look at the assembled players, turned to me, and told me he wanted to go home.

I shared with him that it was an honor to be invited, and then said one of those dumb dad things you regret as soon as you say them: “If it doesn’t hurt you, it will make you stronger.” I said, “It’s not the size of the fight the man is in, but the size of the fight in the man.”

He geared up, ran onto the field, and had a great tryout.

It proved to be a memorable day for both of us.

In some of his darkest moments over the last several years of his life, Drake repeated that story back to me…I think it was his way of reminding me, and himself, that he still had fight left in him.

He was optimistic that he could beat the disease. What neither of us realized was that nobody could.

As a leader, I always try to remain positive and convey my optimism. If I am being honest with myself, I have to admit that my view has shifted somewhat, I now lean towards being cautiously optimistic. My operating mantra is to trust, but also verify. And every plan, no matter how well conceived, should also have a contingency plan B.

Be Actively Empathetic

Empathy can be defined as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

There were many times when we struggled to understand what Drake was doing, or why he was saying the things he was. It took a while (in retrospect, much longer than it should have) for me to realize that he was just living his reality. Everything he was thinking and doing, no matter how illogical or delusional it appeared to the rest of the world, was very real and logical to him.

Even if I did not agree with him, I had to accept that it was his reality.

I have learned that the old adage to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” before you judge them, or try to help them, is profoundly useful in so many personal and work situations.

Looking at the world from someone else’s perspective is hugely helpful to both understand, and communicate better.

As a leader, I try to have the grace to accept that someone might have a different opinion, or just be having a worse day than me.

Have High Expectations, But Be Realistic

The biggest mistake I made as a parent, and the one I regret the most, was over-estimating Drake’s capability to overcome the challenges of his illness. Moreover, by extension, how much I was under-estimating its severity and debilitating impacts.

Expectations are situational. They must be in the context of what is realistically possible, and must consider both the individual and the operating environment.

As a leader, I have learned not to expect miracles. My role is to provide the resources, support and coaching, while removing as many obstacles as I can for my team. However, I should never expect someone to do more than they are capable of, or more than the situation allows.

Give as much scope as they can handle. But not so much that they fail.

Expecting the impossible to happen is setting up disappointment.

Err On the Side of Being Generous

One day we took Drake’s broken bicycle to the shop and had it repaired. When we asked him the next week how it was working, he replied, “I gave it away to a homeless person who I felt needed it more than I did.”

I was angry at the time, but should have seen the bigger picture. It is hard to be angry at someone with such a generous heart.

In the days since his passing, we have heard many stories about his kind and loving attitude. From petting every single dog he walked by, to saving a dying and abandoned plant he found on the sidewalk, to enthusiastically fist-bumping and greeting homeless people on the street, to literally giving away his last dollar to someone who needed a meal.

Life is much richer and more rewarding when you have a bias towards being generous. Even when you are having a miserable day, it always feels better to help someone else.

Live. Love.

One of the last times I saw him, Drake proudly told me that he had gotten two tattoos and asked if I would like to see them. He shared that a neighbor of his was training to become a tattoo artist and Drake had volunteered that he could practice on him.

At this point, I was thinking to myself that this might not end up well, but I gamely said that yes, I would like to see his new tattoos.

He then lifted up his long lacrosse shorts to reveal a bunch of upside down and backwards letters inked across his upper thighs. I was squinting, trying to read them, and Drake clearly saw the confusion on my face.

He then explained, “Dad, it says ‘Live. Love.’  –  The letters are facing me, so that any time I need a reminder, I just have to look down.”

“Live. Love.”

So simple. So pure. So profound…

This has become my new motto. It is how I choose to live my life.

Live. Love.

Final Thoughts

My dear son, Drake, was a rare loving soul whose bright light was extinguished far too soon. We are deeply saddened that the world will never get a chance to know him as we did, or benefit from his contribution. Nor will we get to see him grow into adulthood, launch his career, or start a family.

There is nothing like life and death to put things into perspective. I have learned that most of the stressful things in my daily life really are not that important. I am learning to ignore the small stuff, and focus on the big rocks.

I have so much love for my son, and cherish the time we had with him. There is no question that through his actions and struggles while alive, he has made me a better person.

My wife and I, and our older son, have a huge hole in our hearts. One that we hope someday to patch up and fill with purpose and meaning in honor of Drake and the challenges he faced.

For those that have read this far, I do have one small request.

For the rest of the day, I ask that you will choose to “Live. Love.” In memory of Drake.

I love you, and God bless.

-Kimball

PS – If this article has touched you in any meaningful way, please share it. And please consider helping others who are suffering from the many forms of mental illness and the common companion impacts of substance abuse and homelessness. If you don’t know of a local organization to support, I can highly recommend Transitions-Mental Health Association (www.t-mha.org) – their dedicated and caring team made a big difference in Drake’s life, and so many others.

NOTE: For those who are more curious about Drake’s life, we created a life tribute website with more photos, some poems he wrote, and a video of the service we held in his honor. Here’s the link: Drake Norup

Goodbye 2020, I Will NOT Miss You!

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“I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela

For starters, wishing you and your family a very happy New Year.

For me personally this past year was extremely challenging. It was filled with professional and personal heartaches, along with some momentous positives. I will skip the details, but suffice it to say that in my lifetime I have never experienced the amount of stress, uncertainty, and angst that 2020 delivered.

Fortunately, every storm passes and the sun eventually emerges to shine again.

To say that I have gained a lot from 2020 is an understatement. This might sound horrible and insensitive, but in many respects, I am very thankful for the last 12 months. While I would not want to live through it again, I have learned and grown tremendously.

Here are some of the key lessons I learned.

Expect the Unexpected

So often in our personal and professional lives, we are surprised and caught off guard by an unexpected external force. Something we did not anticipate, or even imagine possible.

Whether it is an insensitive comment from a friend, a political move by a co-worker, losing a job, a direct assault on our business from a competitor, or, perhaps, even a global pandemic, the world of work is full of VUCA forces (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, uncertainty). These can cause a wide range of impacts from just “having a bad morning” to seriously jeopardizing your livelihood or the viability of your organization.

The best solution to any problem is always to prevent it from happening in the first place. While predicting unknowns is not always possible, developing a good situational awareness of your environment and marketplace is a great place to start.

You might be surprised, as I was, at how many “clues” you missed by rushing through your daily routine and not paying closer attention.

Developing a better understanding of your surroundings will help to better define possible threats. You can then begin to brainstorm their potential impacts, and your response, should they arise. This type of Scenario Planning is a key aspect of VUCA Strategic Planning, and doing it regularly will help to ensure you and your organization are more resilient against any threats.

External forces are very real. We cannot ignore them. However, we also cannot allow them to consume us.

When they hit us, we have to address them, learn from them, and then focus on moving forward.

Crisis Can Lead to Introspection

Another big lesson from all the VUCA forces that hit me this past year was this: The event does not define us. It is how we choose to respond that counts.

I have seen three common response patterns, and depending on the situation, each of them has merit:

  1. You can decide to hunker down and hide. Sometimes we get lucky and the storm will pass by leaving us unscathed. Unfortunately, for many issues in the world of work, hope is not a strategy, and the issue will still likely be there tomorrow.
  2. You can lash out. With the right strategy, fighting back can sometimes be effective. However, if you get it wrong, things can get messy in a hurry.
  3. Or, you can take it as a learning opportunity and figure out how to move on. Sometimes we have to accept the things we cannot change, and pivot.

There is a lot of value to be gained from detaching yourself (taking a neutral and objective view), reviewing what happened (being honest, not overstating it but also not sugarcoating it). This allows you the time and space to figure out what you could or should have done differently (if anything). Which hopefully will lead to internalizing the lesson (so you do not repeat the same mistake again), and then figuring out the plan to quickly move on.

Another lesson that 2020 taught me was I am often guilty of not taking enough time for introspection. I think it is a common executive ailment – everyone is so stretched for time, moving fast, and always focused on solving problems quickly. This merciless cycle does not afford the time we need to process and learn.

Like many professionals, the pandemic forced me to work from home and prevented any business travel since March. This has given me more time to think, to learn, and to strategize about the future than I have had in the past 20 years. As an added bonus, the time with family and a better work/life balance has been priceless.

Crisis can lead to healthy introspection, if you take the time to do it.

Introspection Leads to Reinvention

By allowing ourselves time for introspection, something magical happens. We not only gain clarity, but also a newfound confidence to revisit and challenge the status quo. I have found that the more profound the external force, the greater the potential opportunity for change.

As evidence, we do not need to look much further than what has happened in the world of work over the past 10 months. The global COVID-19 pandemic caused many organizations to make rapid and far-reaching changes to how they get work done. A few examples of this dynamic workforce and workplace reinvention:

  • As evidenced by the unprecedented spike in US unemployment, almost every organization cut headcount in 2020. While we can debate whether some organizations did not cut enough, and others perhaps cut too far, the reality is millions of jobs are likely not coming back in their prior form. Many of these roles will resurface as more flexible, contingent jobs.
  • Some industries (for example, travel) may never come back to the same pre-pandemic level, while others (for example, home delivery) will reach new highs.
  • In 2020 we proved that almost every white-collar role can effectively be accomplished working from home. Many studies I read actually showed an increase in productivity for these newly remote workers. As the pandemic recedes, it will be interesting to see what organizations decide to do with their remote workforces, and their need for traditional office space.
  • Many highly skilled professionals will take advantage of these radical changes in the workplace and reinvent their careers as experts for hire (like how I am helping some awesome growth minded organizations with my 1CMO Consulting services!), achieving new levels of career satisfaction and work/life balance.
  • The research firm Gartner, predicts that by 2024 only a quarter of workplace meetings will take place in person. The meteoric rise of virtual meetings will have far-reaching impacts. Not only eliminating the need for a lot of corporate real estate, but also changing the dynamic of field sales (and all the things that accompany it like business travel and entertainment!)
  • The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. In other words, not in person.

These are just a few examples of how organizations, and the individuals who work in them, have been forced to challenge their historical assumptions when confronted by a crisis. The ability to test different approaches, see what sticks, and then quickly pivot, is the winning approach.

Reinvention Leads to New Opportunity

I am looking forward to seeing what the year 2021 has in store.

As we begin slowly emerging from our pandemic-forced hibernation, my prediction is that there will be many new opportunities (both personal and professional) in the upcoming year, visible to those who are paying attention to their surroundings and actively looking for them!

My practice of growth strategy consulting is certain to benefit from a rising optimism in the markets. And I suspect many readers of this article will be able to say the same.

With that, I say one last goodbye to the year 2020. I am very thankful and blessed to have survived intact, but I will NOT miss you.

-Onward

There is No Silver Bullet for Growth

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“There are no quick wins in business – it takes years to become an overnight success.” – Richard Branson

It is human nature to want a quick fix for every problem.

The proverbial “silver bullet” that will slay fearsome creatures with one shot.

The prospect tempts us every day:

  • Take this diet pill, and lose 5 pounds in a week…
  • Buy this stock, it is certain to double in the next quarter…
  • Execute this marketing tactic, and you will double your sales pipeline by the end of the year…

You get the idea. We all seek the easy solution. Oh, and, we want it to be painless too.

So, here is a news flash: It doesn’t exist.

Sorry.

There is no silver bullet.

The Conversation That Inspired This Article

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine last week. He was curious about my fractional Chief Marketing Officer services, and the focus on helping organizations grow. He wanted to know what the answer was…as if I had discovered “the” secret to growth and packaged it up for sale!

I explained to him the process I go through to help organizations unlock their growth potential.

It is a discovery and development process. It requires introspection. Honesty. Creativity. And, hard work.

It often involves asking difficult, sometimes uncomfortable, questions.

The “answer” to the growth question is not canned, but is as unique as each organization is.

Therein lies the rub.

Many leaders naively look for that secret marketing formula, or magical sales elixir that will fuel exponential growth for their business.

The reality is, in 99% of the cases, the big growth you see in an organization today is the result of a lot of hard work (the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears!) that took place over the course of many months or years.

What we are seeing is the compounding effect of multiple aligned actions, which taken together, over time, result in growth.

There is no silver bullet for growth.

Growth is Not Easy

Business innovation and growth are not easy.

It is easy to look at companies like Apple or Google and jealously think how easy they must have it. With their $Billions of market capitalization and a huge army of employees, they seem to effortlessly turn out a steady stream of great products and services which everybody wants.

The dirty secret is we are only seeing their successes. These are innovation-driven organizations that are constantly experimenting, testing, and refining new offerings. They invest huge sums of time and money into the effort, and have a well-developed playbook to bring them to market. Rarely do we see their failures because they have quietly killed them off and moved on.

Everyone wants the quick fix, but it doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be willing to put it all out there. I call it ‘the secret to being an overnight success,’ which means there really isn’t such a thing as an overnight success! The secret is you work really hard for 10 years, and then you become an overnight success. – Jon Gordon

True, there are those rare companies that get lucky and realize stratospheric, seemingly overnight, growth. Sadly, most of them do not survive in the long-term because they failed to build a solid foundation or invest in a sustainable business model.

There is no silver bullet for growth.

What to Do Next?

So what should you do if you are seeking growth for your organization?

First, make sure you really are ready for growth.

Next, take a disciplined and methodical approach to develop the best strategy for your organization from the ground up. A great place to start is by answering these six fundamental growth questions.

If you are feeling stuck, a fractional CMO can provide immediate assistance.

The harsh reality of the VUCA forces in our world is there are no silver bullets.

You need to be prepared. Have a plan. Execute (MFGSD) relentlessly. Expect the unexpected. Pivot quickly and adapt to changes. Keep on moving!

-Full speed ahead

How to Avoid the Efficiency Trap

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“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker

Many business leaders put in long hours and are always “busy” at work. However, this frenetic level of activity does not necessarily mean they are working on the right things.

How can this be?

In a turbulent and disrupted business environment like we find ourselves in today, it is very easy for time-starved executives to fall into “firefighting” mode – spending their days jumping from one urgent issue to the next. While it may be psychically rewarding to always feel needed, to cross off many to-do’s each day, and come home exhausted after a hard day at work…it is also a dangerous trap for leaders.  

I call it the efficiency trap.

Why is it a trap? Because if you are not careful about how you spend your time, it becomes very easy to spend all your time efficiently working on the wrong things. By their very nature, urgent items tend to beat out important ones, and consume all our valuable time in the process.

The key takeaway: Being efficient at addressing urgent but less important issues does not necessarily make you more effective in the long-term.

Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Direct Your Focus

In the world of time management and productivity improvement training there is an old framework credited to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The aptly named Eisenhower Matrix is a helpful management tool to help prioritize activities by considering their urgency and importance. It looks like this:

The logic behind it can be interpreted from various public speeches, where Eisenhower explained how he prioritized issues: “Especially whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future.” He went on to clarify, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

Following this logic, many leaders incorrectly interpret the framework as prioritizing Urgent/Important. In effect prioritizing quadrant I (the green box in the graphic below) over all the others:

Unfortunately, this is exactly how most leaders spend their days. In crisis mode. Putting out fires. While they may be very efficient in solving immediate problems for their organizations, they may not be very effective in addressing long-term strategic challenges with what little time they have left.

As Stephen Covey went on to explain in his famous Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book, we spend most of our time in quadrant I and III because they are “urgent” and thus steal our attention. We also tend to spend more time than we should in quadrant IV, because these are easy distractions and allow us to procrastinate hard things while appearing busy.

All of this activity effectively leaves no time for the most valuable and important quadrant of all, quadrant II.  Quadrant II is where we plan, reflect, strategize, are creative, nurture important relationships, and prepare for the future.

Effective leaders should spend most of their time in quadrant II:

Ironically, when leaders spent more of their time in quadrant II (the strategic planning frame) they can also anticipate and prevent many of the distracting quadrant I crises from occurring in the first place.

We Are Attracted to the Urgent

As humans, we are naturally attracted to bright shiny objects. These can take many forms. Sometimes they look like a neon billboard, a provocative advertisement, or an urgent crisis. In either case, it is interesting to note that science backs this up.

The Journal of Consumer Research recently conducted a study to examine how individuals decide what to work on when faced with tasks of mixed urgency and importance. The researchers discovered an interesting pattern: the test subjects paid more attention to time-sensitive tasks over tasks that were less urgent, even when the less urgent tasks offered greater rewards.

This quirk of human psychology – called the “Mere-Urgency Effect” – helps to explain why many leaders struggle with prioritizing their tasks. We have a natural inclination to prioritize tasks with an urgent deadline over tasks without any urgency regardless of the long-term payoffs or negative impact.

The Connection to VUCA Strategic Planning

We know that a strategic plan is useless unless leaders and their teams focus on execution. This bias to action is critical. By developing a robust VUCA Strategic Plan and following an effective Management Cycle cadence, leaders can stack the odds in their favor and help drive successful outcomes.

Sadly, many strategic plans fail. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most common is leadership distraction. By focusing on immediate urgent issues, they shift attention away from long-term strategic execution.

Does this mean the effort to produce the strategic plan was a waste of time? Not necessarily.

Since a well-thought-out strategic plan has articulated what is most important for the future of the organization and how to get there, it provides a great filter for leaders to evaluate how they should spend their time each day

The strategic plan ensures a focus on doing the right things. Being effective instead of just efficient.

Strategic Questions to Ask

So, how do we know if we are spending our time on the right things?

The place to begin is by examining the work you are doing, and the work of each of your team members across the organization. For each activity, ask questions around the value delivered, and if it has any impact on moving the organization forward. A few suggestions:

  • Why are we doing this activity?
  • Is it going to move us towards one (or more) of our strategic objectives?
  • Is this in line with our Mission, purpose, values?
  • Does this activity fit within our stated strategy and plan?
  • Are we neglecting quadrant II activities at the expense of more urgent, or less important activities?
  • Bonus questions: If it truly is a necessary activity? Could we do it more efficiently? Could it be outsourced?

Focus on Effectiveness

The next time you tell yourself “I was so productive today…” be sure to consider if you spent your time on the right things.

When it comes to strategy execution, effectiveness beats efficiency every time. It is much better to be 1% effective at doing the right thing than 100% efficient at doing the wrong thing! Over time, you can work on improving the speed of execution.

Effectiveness in doing the right activities will bring us closer to achieving our strategic objectives, and bring the organization closer to achieving its vision of success.

-Onward

A Bias to Action (MFGSD!)

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“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” —Peter Drucker

For much of my career I have focused on helping organizations grow. This focus on growth has allowed me to sit at the interesting intersection of strategy, innovation, marketing, sales, and customer success in a number of leadership roles across a few industries.

With the benefit of this experience and perspective, I can clearly see that there are two consistent ingredients required for success: Strategy and execution.

I have written extensively about how important it is for organizations to develop agile and flexible strategic plans designed to achieve long-term goals in a hostile VUCA business environment.

However, a plan by itself is useless. There is something even more important to success than having a plan. What could that ingredient be?

A bias to action.

Most Plans Just Gather Dust

Despite the enormous investment of time and resources that leaders of organizations put into developing their strategic plans for the future, most fail. Why?

There are many common reasons why organizations don’t achieve the results they define in their strategic plans. These can include a bad strategy, flawed situational awareness, unrealistic goals, unforeseen (VUCA!) scenarios, weak teams, and even poor leadership. However, by far the biggest culprit is bad or non-existent execution.

Strategy without execution is a complete waste of time.

Business leaders know that nothing good happens in business until someone does something. The alternative to this proactive approach is simply to wait for the universe (or your competitors) to take action. In my experience, this reactive approach never ends up well. Unfortunately, too many people wait for things to happen instead of proactively making them happen. With this approach, you don’t make forward progress. You don’t learn anything.

Mary Kay Ash, they dynamic founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics said it best: “There are four kinds of people in this world: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who don’t know that anything happened!”

A bias to action is what makes things happen.

Focus on Execution

A common ingredient to every successful startup or highly functioning executive team that I’ve been involved with in my career has been a simple operating philosophy that I like to call “Move Fast and Get S#!T Done.” Over the years I’ve shortened it and made it a little more politically correct by referring to it by the acronym: “MFGSD”.

It boils down to a laser-like focus on execution.

Effective leaders make sure their teams know the vision and strategy of the strategic plan, ensure they have the support and resources they need to execute, and then get out of the way.

MFGSD!

How do you create this bias for action? It starts with effective leadership and developing your team. The goal is to move your people up what I call the “action ladder”:

  • Level 0 – Ignorant of opportunity or threat, therefore no action
  • Level 1 – Can identify there is an opportunity or threat
  • Level 2 – Proposes a viable solution for opportunity or threat
  • Level 3 – Can develop a plan of action to address opportunity or threat
  • Level 4 – Can develop a plan of action for opportunity or threat, and it is feasible
  • Level 5 – Solving the opportunity or threat by executing the plan of action

If you have ever had a “star” employee on your team, you will recognize how valuable (and rare!) Level 5 players are. They make sure important things get done.

Most execution problems are easy to fix. Start with your people. You have two basic options: Get the people in your organization motivated to perform at a higher level than they are today, or get higher-level people into your organization.

Go Forth, MFGSD!

The late Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, said something that in my opinion perfectly sums up the concept of being strategic, having a bias to action and the MFGSD ethos: “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”

The important lesson for leaders – there is a very long list of things in the world you cannot control. Execution is not one of them. You can control your actions.

Pick a direction. Create a plan. Execute. React to what you learn. Keep going.

MFGSD!

That’s it. A very simple concept, and extremely powerful if you (and your team) practice it.

-Onward