The shortest distance between decision-making and execution is accountability

As the half-year mark looms, a telling exercise is to list all the really good decisions made by your organization (or division, department, group or team – including those made by you individually) that didn’t get executed. Or didn’t get executed well.The most common reason for that lack of execution? Lack of accountability, often caused by an over-dependence instead on processes to achieve execution.

Systems and processes are good in their place, but one place they’re not good is in the gap between making a decision and acting on it – they just get in the way.

The solution? Think ‘Who?‘, not ‘How?‘. Once you’ve made what you know is a high-quality decision, don’t start figuring out how to implement it – instead, allocate and/or delegate it to someone to implement and hold them accountable with regular, consistent checkins.

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About the Author

Les McKeown is the Founder and CEO of Predictable Success.

Les is the author of "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There". "The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success", "Do Lead: Share Your Vision. Inspire Others. Achieve the Impossible" and most recently "Do Scale: A Roadmap to Building a Remarkable Company".