Newsletter: October 2007

“Most failures in organisations today are not the result of a lack of smarts (strategy), they are caused by a lack of execution – things just don’t get done.” Stephen R Covey

At Apodi we are always looking to find new ideas and tools which we feel can help our clients improve their ability to execute. As a small company we are not able (yet!) to develop all our own tools but what we are able to do is research the world to find those tools that may best suit our clients requirements.
Recently Apodi has started to use some tools recommended by FranklinCovey which are helping us to execute our strategy more effectively. The tools have been developed to support FranklinCoveys 4 Disciplines of Execution. These 4 Disciplines are as follows:

Discipline 1
Focus on the most important Goals
The assumption behind this discipline is that human beings are wired to do only one thing at a time with excellence. People spend to much time focused on more trivial issues and are not spending enough time on more crucial issues.

Discipline 2
Create a compelling scorecard
Measures motivate and should be turned into a compelling scorecard that is accessible, visual, engaging, doable and concise to people within the business.

Discipline 3
Translate Goals into specific actions
All goals need to be broken down into new behaviours and activities on the front line. Weekly planning and the implementation of a planning system are recommended.

Discipline 4
Hold each other accountable – all of the time
Maintaining commitment to a goal requires frequent team accountability.

In the recommended listening section of the newsletter, there are details of the FranklinCovey CD package which includes some tools which we believe could help our clients execute more effectively. This includes a trial package of the PlanPlus system which integrates with Microsoft products and helps execute the disciplines noted above.

We believe that the system together with the model we have outlined in one of the other articles in this newsletter provides an unbeatable package for those clients really focused on making things happen.

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