Clarity, Focus, Execution

In today’s ultra-competitive world, getting superior results faster is absolutely critical to success! So many want it! However, this hectic speed of life makes it easy to become side-tracked by things that steal priority and make us less effective. People are hungry for ways to get ahead, to win, to accelerate results both personally and professionally.

Tony Jeary’s methodology addresses this dead center. His thinking is sought and used by the presidents of the world’s top companies, like Wal-mart, Bridgestone-Firestone Diversified Products, Qualcomm, and even the U.S. Senate. Many of the world’s top achievers fly to his back yard to learn from him on how to make things happen. For the last two years, Tony and his team have sorted and organized his distinct methodology and have developed it into a simple, yet unique new book.

Tony’s latest book, Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life, details a methodology that will help you get clear, stay focused, and efficiently execute relevant, high-value activities… thereby getting you the results, and success, you really want… faster! It is destined to become the ultimate success guide for corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, athletes and other individuals seeking success.

The Strategic Acceleration approach is based on three pivotal concepts:

Clarity: Understanding your targets clearly and the “why” behind reaching them (personally and professionally)
Focus: Concentrating on what really matters, and filtering out what doesn’t
Execution: Using effective communication (persuasion) to get things accomplished
It’s about developing a clear vision, outlining priorities and objectives, and tackling goals with a real sense of urgency and focus. Once understood and deployed, Strategic Acceleration will have a powerful, long-term positive influence on the results and success that so many people want.

CLARITY
When clarity is lost, or never achieved, it is almost impossible to generate the kind of focus necessary to establish a dynamic organization capable of acting swiftly and deftly on a daily basis. Clarity is achieved when we know where we are in relationship to where we want to go. The gap between the two is where focus must be applied.

The principle of clarity requires a specific clearness of mind that is unmistakable and evident to all. Clarity is achieved when ideas and concepts are clearly explained and presented internally and externally.

The requirements for clarity are specific with respect to three issues:

– Purpose – relates to the “why” of things

– Value – relates to the real benefits that can be acquired

– Objectives – relates to the premise that unless objectives are stated clearly and understood by all, the likelihood of achieving them is slim

FOCUS
There is a gap that must be crossed between current conditions and the ultimate vision. Focus is achieved when the critical success factors needed to propel us across the gap are identified and understood. In other words, we are able to identify the main things that must be done to propel us across the gap and achieve the vision. Focus is the ability to keep those main things the main thing as we go.

If we do not have focus – if organizations do not grasp the main things required of them – then decision making becomes difficult, awkward and mushy. To cover up this cancer, bureaucracy grows and when bureaucracy is mature a culture of indecisiveness is born. At that point, focus becomes very difficult to achieve. Sometimes, only legitimate threats to survival of the enterprise can trigger the action needed to fix things.

The primary characteristic of an indecisive culture is excessive preparation. Excessive preparation involves endless planning sessions and meetings that serve little or no purpose except to provide an illusion of progress. An organization composed of people who are constantly “getting ready” to act is an organization that has been shackled by itself. It is not focused and is unable to act because of its indecisiveness. Strategic Speed is impossible in such an environment and results will rarely meet or surpass expectations.

Focus is only possible when the things that are to be focused upon have been presented and sold to those who must focus on them. At the heart of focus are core issues of direction and the marshaling of resources in a laser-focused way to insure that effort is expended on the things that really matter. Tony Jeary’s facilitation strategy to create the proper focus zeros in on three issues;

* Mandating the correct action items
* Creating the appropriate amount of detail to support action mandates
* Creating benchmarks that can measure results.

EXECUTION
Clarity and focus provide your plan of “what” and “how,” but when it’s time to get things done, it’s all about actually “doing” it. This might sound simple, maybe even overly so, but this is where you’re going to spend most of your time. Approaching it well-prepared and with the right philosophy will make all the difference towards your success. I want you to remember the 3 Ps of Execution: Persuasion, Production, and Presence.

Using strong persuasion skills, you’ll be able to get support from others who can help you execute, and will undoubtedly benefit from your success. Being able to clearly and confidently state why your vision is authentic and important is the key to persuasion. From there, you’ll be well-aligned for production, or getting things done faster and more efficiently.

This requires you to practice Production Before Perfection (PBP), which is a terrific way to combat procrastination, because you get started and continue to work in parallel progress instead of waiting for every single detail to come into perfect harmony. Before you know it, you’ll actually be finished with a task or project, while others without the PBP mindset are still fooling around and banking on tomorrow. This will enable you to really stretch your paradigms and see where you can REALLY go, which will undoubtedly be far beyond what you thought you were capable of reaching!

But for ultimate execution, you need to do more than just convince people to support you and help you knock out tasks on your to-do list. Using your strategic presence, you need to engender voluntary change, which is long-lasting and will have far-reaching effects. Your positive actions and behaviors will inspire others to exceed expectations consistently and wholeheartedly, with courage, good judgment, and integrity.