A mediocre strategy, fully and energetically executed, beats a brilliant strategy incompletely or haltingly executed. Plans are important, but only execution makes change. You probably already know what to do, go do it!

Yesterday one of my executive coaches said to me “CEO’s are in the business of behavior selection more than behavior modification.” This rings true to me. As managers of employees our job is to select people who already behave the way we need them to, much more than it is to try to motivate people to behave differently than they normally do. I think this applies most strongly to things we learn early in life (our personality, how we interact with other people, our learning style, etc) and not as much to things we learn as adults on the job (processes, technical skills, etc). Select employees, don’t try to modify employees.

I’ve been reading Jack Welch’s book “Winning”. It’s advice about sound leadership practices in business. He was the CEO of GE for 20 years, so he has a lot of experience behind what he writes.

There’s an underlying theme of approaching business as competition between companies, with winners and losers in that competition. I think that accurately reflects reality in free market societies like ours, and it’s quite different than a solely customer-focused approach.

This theme comes through, for example, when he advocates evaluating business divisions and rewarding their managers based on performance compared to the competition, rather than made-up budget targets.

The same theme comes through in his proposal of a simple strategic planning process that analyzes one’s business and the competition looking for a “big aha”, a strategic opportunity to beat the competition with better product, etc., followed by intense implementation of that one thing. For example, in GE’s CT scanner business, the big aha came when they observed hospitals’ frustration with the cost of frequently replacing million-dollar machines as the technology improved. Their strategy was to come out with a line of CT scanners that could have their hardware and software upgraded for a fraction of the cost of a new machine, and this propelled them to the #1 spot in that market. It was one simple strategy.

In line with this, Jack says a mission statement should be a statement of “how we intend to win” in this business. I think that’s a very clarifying idea for any for-profit business.

Knowing your stuff is absolutely essential, but to succeed you need more. I think knowledgeable people have the most impact when they are also people of humility and action.

Last week I had the benefit of talking to a business consultant with experience running businesses hundreds of times the size of mine. After that conversation I found myself thinking about bigger possibilities than I had been able to envision before. I couldn’t think big enough on my own.

Being believed in expands vision. Get around people who believe in your potential, and it will rub off on you. Being outclassed expands vision. Get around people who have been to higher levels than you have, and you’ll be inspired.

Go find those people. It’s your responsibility.