The Art of Execution

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

He has a great 2-pager (available for download from a terrific source called the Biz Info Library) called "The Art of Execution."

His premise?

• "After you raise the money, now what? The good news is that you got the money. The bad news is you got the money. At the end of the process, every entrepreneur has to answer the same question as the candidate: "Now what?" The answer to this question is, "Now you execute." And the next question is, "How do we execute?"

Guy's advice:

• Create something worth executing.
• Set goals (that are measurable, achievable, relevant, rat-hole resistant)
• Postpone, or at least de-emphasize, touchy feely goals.
• Communicate the goals.
• Measure progress on a weekly basis.
• Establish a single point of responsibility.
• Follow thru on an issue until it is done or irrelevant. (persistence!)
• Recognize and reward the achievers.
• Establish a culture of execution.

BOTTOMLINE: "Execution is not an event--a onetime push towards achieving goals. Rather it is a way of life, and this way of life (execution versus non-execution) is set in the early days of the organization. The best way to establish this culture is for the founders, particularly the CEO, to set an example of filling goals, responding to customers, and heeding and measuring employees."