On Hard Work

Organizations re-align and re-organize every new year. Each new year brings with it some fresh thinking and some great ideas. Then the year ends and we see that while some of those plans did take off and succeed, some of them never saw light of the day and a few ones failed.  

So what does it take to execute a brilliant idea? Hardwork – says Mike Neiss at Tom Peters blog in his post “Hard Work Matters“.  Here is what Mike writes:

“[Organizations] want to believe a brilliant idea can magically make a difference. Need to fill your leadership pipeline? Hold leadership training classes. Not as efficient as you would like to be? Educate the organization in the Toyota Production System. Collaboration a problem? Maybe some teambuilding activities. These are all good ideas and good choices. They do not become actionable without the hard work required to unfreeze old behaviors, remove existing organizational barriers, build new reinforcement mechanisms into the system, provide the necessary funding for support activities, etc. The ideas will not become part of the way work is done in the organization unless they produce results that help the organization win customers, investors, and top talent. Yes, the work matters. And results matter. And hard work matters. Because without it, there are no results.

I don’t remember the name of CEO who was being interviewed and when asked about the secret of his organization’s success and he replied that it took them 20 years to be an overnight success! So yes, strategy matters and so does execution and hard work.