Executives at corporate organizations have the most reponsibility among all the employees. If the company misses an earnings estimate, if the revenue growth is not as expected, if the hiring is not as fast as it should be, executives are under attack from investors. Naturally, with high pressure comes high pay and benifits.
Literally, an executive is someone who executes and gets stuff done. Executives are supposed to have good execution skills. Although i am not an executive, i think everyone needs to have some degree of execution skills to get stuff done and make impact, either in personal life or at work. Following are some of my thoughts on efficient execution and getting things done:
- Create a doc and write down your thoughts. State down what has been done before, how is the current proposal delivering value and why you think it will have impact. Writing will give you clarity and is also a means for others to give their feedback on your thoughts and ideas async.
- Before starting any project note down the stake holders, the POCs for infra and other tooling required to build what your are building, and be clear on the goals. Try to achieve consensus from teammates and stakeholders.
- Note down and assimilate pointers for code, docs and anything that is relavant for the project. Share it with others and ask if there is anything else that would be useful.
- Try to get help as soon as you can. Its not about wheather you know stuff or not. Its about your team delivering impact and driving value. Try to unblock yourself really fast by reading the pointers. If the doc pointers are not good enough, hunt down the relavant POCs and groups and ask them questions. You cannot blame anyone but yourself for execution failures.
- Have a sense of urgency. Execute under self imposed deadlines.
- Try out different methods. Fail fast. Fail well. Learn from failures.
- Any complex task looks intimidating and challenging at first. There are many unknowns and you don’t know what you don’t know.
- Recursively break down the task into more managable, well defined tasks. Create a DAG(directed graph) out of these tasks. Some tasks could be exploratory, which would produce more tasks or these tasks could be terminal and don’t produce any tasks. By deliverng on smaller tasks, you build momentum. Use that momentum to tackle harder tasks.
- You are responsible for delivering and making impact. If blocked on others, follow up with them frequently and politely(its ok to be an asshole sometimes). Escalate if there is no response. At the end of the day, only you are the only person responsible and to blame for your success or failure.