Ideas, People, and Execution

I am sure by now, most everyone has read one article or another that says, "it's not the idea, it's the people." I like to take one step further and point out that, aside from the ideas and the people, what's even more important is "execution." I am not the first one to say this as this idea has been published by well established entrepreneurs like Ryan P. Allis before. Here's an example.

With that said, this is not to say that I am undermining the importance of good ideas and great people but on a scale of comparison, execution is what I see as the primary factor for why many startups fail which ties in very closely with my last post because execution summarizes exactly what many former fortune 500 executives running their first startup fail in.

Ideas need to be refined to create a sound business model but as Allis pointed out in the above linked article, unless you are a PHD doing research at a top university, chances are, someone else has probably thought of your idea. On the other hand, giving "people" credit for a successful business seems flawed in that although the people is the source of effective execution, at the end of the day, "execution" is the underlying factor on why a business is successful.

I want to illustrate what I mean by "execution": For example, even if you have the greatest product in the world but your deployment staff is poorly trained or communicated to, no customer is ever going to be happy with you. Another example would be, if your employee's morale is low, the outcome of their work will never be optimize even if it's acceptable. Perhaps an even better example would be, if you don't properly foster a healthy environment for employees to step up and take charge of their area of expertise, you are wasting money and producing poor results.

The point to all of this boils down to one thing. When starting a business or reevaluating why your business may not be optimized, pay very close attention to the execution portion of your business and the answers to your questions will become much more clear.