I have been talking to a few fellow entrepreneurs lately about education vs execution. For example, since my background is in engineering, I have been trained to think about problems methodically and to solve them following processes. With that being said, when I went into business, I decided to become as educated as possible, so that I could foresee problems/issues, and apply my engineering methodical background to solve them.

What I have found is that there’s a major difference between the pace of work for an engineer and the pace of business. If we spend the time to solve one problem/issue, as I would have normally done as an engineer, perhaps today I may still be filling Articles of Incorporation for my business. My point is, it takes a while to solve an engineering problem, while business move at the speed of thought!

Additionally, when education is too much? And what about execution? Are you executing and measuring your changes to see if you are doing enough or simply, are you doing anything at all from all that education you are getting?

This is my subject today. Sometimes, we become fixated with education (yes, guilty as charged) and sometimes we become stagnated when it comes time for execution (also guilty as charged, or at least used to a certain degree). This can be addressed by adding accountability to your execution process. Perhaps you wonder, but who or how can I introduce accountability to my business just for the sake of execution? Well, accountability is very important, not just for execution purposes, but returning to our subject in hand. There are several ways to accomplish accountability for execution and I will discuss 2 examples:

• Partners—Do you have partners in your business? Discuss a strategy that you’d like to execute with your partners and have them serve as the accountability portion of the equation. The opposite also works, when your partners come up with ideas/changes, now you serve as the accountability person to monitor the execution of their ideas.
• Coach—Another idea is to hire a coach. A coach is indispensable. They incorporate accountability as part of their duties. A good coach will probe at what you are doing but will nudge you in the right direction to continue your growth. Coaches know what to ask and how to tell you that you are not executing enough in your business. Athletes, to the day they retire have coaches. To this day, Tiger Woods have not one but several coaches depending upon what he may be working on. Basketball and football players won’t step onto the court/field without their coaches. Hence, there may be something to this whole coaching thing!! I have had several coaches in the past 2 years, and I have really enjoyed the dynamic that we develop.

Education is a great thing, but execution is expected. Where execution is lacking in a business, said business will surely come to nothing. If you are lacking execution, figure out how you can bring back this key aspect to your personal as well as professional life. There’s a great book about Execution, called: “Execution” by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan with Charles Burk.

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