entrepreneur for a decade. Want to know his idea of execution? It’s launching a
new WordPress website in a new industry every two weeks, SEO the crap out of
it, and “hope” something new happens.
After ten years, I think he owns 1,000
websites—all of which make nothing, unless you count fourteen cents from
Google AdSense something.
You see, execution is not business cards from Vistaprint with “CEO”
emblazoned on them. It’s not reading books. It’s not learning Python or PHP
with no basis for learning that code. We’re confusing preparation, overanalysis,
and busywork for execution. Sure you’re busy, but not busy executing.
The problem with penning execution is no one knows what execution
IS
until you’re deep in the trenches. And once you’re there, the real game begins.
Execution wears many dresses, dependent on the dance. If you’re opening a
new sports bar downtown, execution is vastly different from executing a clothing
line. Sure there are a lot of “best practices”
and things you can learn, but the
bottom line is, you won’t know what needs to be known until you get there.
You
will never be ready.
Everyone faces the same challenge: you, me, and even the seasoned venture-
capitalist with a million lapdog followers.
You don’t know what you need to know
until you know.
EXECUTING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE HUNGER GAMES FOR BUSINESS
It’s you against your opponent. You’re in a clearing inside a dark forest. In
the spirit of
The Hunger Games
, your objective is to kill your opponent. Knowing
this day would come, you’ve prepared for two years. During this time, you’ve
read dozens of books and have become a proficient marksman while learning
jujitsu.
The gamemaster stands before you. You and your competitor are presented
with a table of ten weapons: a crossbow, a ball-peen hammer, a samurai sword, a
sniper rifle with unlimited ammo, a large suffocating plastic bag, a baseball bat
autographed
by Pete Rose, a serrated hunting knife, a tire iron, a canister of
pepper spray, and a cattle prod. The gamemaster offers a choice: pick two
weapons. Based on your recently learned skills, you logically decide on the knife
and the sniper rifle. Strangely, your opponent chooses the pepper spray and the
plastic bag.
The gamemaster nods and announces the game has begun. After saddling up
your gear, you head north into the forest, your opponent south.
After an hour of walking (and strategizing), your
trek is interrupted by an
artificial hissing noise heard beyond the ravine ahead of you. You quietly drop to
your stomach, taking a tactical position behind a piece of driftwood.
Armed with your sniper scope, you aim your sight at the source. It’s your
competitor and he’s inexplicably spraying his plastic sheet with pepper spray.
Hmmm, that’s odd. Nonetheless, it’s your chance to take him out.
But before you can angle your body for the shot, you hear another noise—not
a hiss but a buzz, subtle at first but intensifying by the second. You gather to your
feet and look around. You see nothing, but the buzz crescendos louder. The sky
darkens and it’s not the clouds.
You crane your head skyward and see it: a black mass, swarming and large.
Oh shit. It’s killer bees and they’re heading your way.
You fire your rifle into the mass, hoping the noise redirects them. Nothing.
Shit! Find cover! A river! Something!
You sprint out into the ravine, knowing you have about eleven-seconds to
find refuge. Unfortunately, eleven-seconds is faster than you.
The black cloud engulfs you.
Your hands flail in a frenzy, one of them armed with your knife. You strike a
bee dead—but two billion remain. Every inch of your body rages as if being
burned alive. You slump to your knees and crumple over in the fetal position as
the suffocating venom invades. As everything
fades to a burnt black, death
welcomely arrives after an eternal minute.
Your comrade in competition?
He survives the swarm…
under the cover of a plastic bag that stinks of
capsicum.
The moral of this tale parallels the perils of execution:
you simply won’t know
what’s needed until you need it
. The odds of picking the right weapons before
they’re needed are about as far-fetched as someone picking pepper spray and
plastic for the forest.
In the end, we confuse preparation and busywork for
execution, when
the real mettle comes from entering the forest and experiencing
firsthand what the game demands.
Identify the problem or the challenge and then act.
Unlike the death forest, we can choose the tools needed based on the
encounter. Unfortunately, I have no clue what your business is or might be. I can
only offer a solid foundation and the best practices making your forested venture
expected and manageable. The roadmap to the
great executional unknowns
within our
UNSCRIPTED
framework is called
kinetic execution
, or (KE).
CHAPTER 39
KINETIC EXECUTION:
EVERYTHING SIGNIFICANT
STARTED INSIGNIFICANTLY
Perfection is not obtainable, but if we chase perfection we can
catch excellence.
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