Execution breaks down because of the conflict between the enormous amount of effort required to maintain an operation (your “day job” or what we call the “whirlwind”) and the goals for moving the operation forward. While both forces are necessary, they are not the same and do not get along. They compete for time, energy, and attention.

One of the most significant barriers to superior results in any organization is chronic inconsistency — the variation in performance between divisions, between departments, between shifts in the same department, and between people on the same shift. In every great organization, you will find pockets of great execution — a “top 20%” of high performance. The challenge is to move the middle 60% of your average workforce toward the higher performance level of the top 20%. Improvement of this magnitude doesn’t produce incremental results — it creates breakthrough results.

To move your performance curve righter and tighter, your organization needs to define its target — the most important goal to accomplish and what behavior needs to change to hit that goal. Engage with FranklinCovey to bring tremendous focus into your organizational strategy and learn how to hit those goals through our Execution Design Session (EDS).