According to Seth Godin, "There's no shortage of remarkable ideas. What's missing is the will to execute them." In the world of productivity, nothing can be truer than these words. What is the benefit of supposedly good or great ideas without execution? No idea is really either good or great until it is executed, and when that happens, value is created and lives are impacted positively.
For execution to happen, there is a long sojourn from creativity, the churning out of ideas to innovation, the manifesting of the ideas, and between these, what we have is execution. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff, where men are sieved from boys.
Execution is where the value resides, and because the creation of true value is scarce across every industry, the door of value is ever open for those who have the balls to enter in. There is never going to be a time where value is not in dearth because at the point of execution is where men fail to show up.
The will is a mental faculty, one of 6 faculties that mankind is endowed with; the other 5 being perception, imagination, reasoning, intuition and memory. Everyone has these but not everyone is aware, let alone develop and use them for their daily activities to actualise their intentions. Doing this means living intentionally and deliberately.
We can actually perceive something to be a good idea but do nothing about it. We can go into the factory of imagination with it and not be able to get it out because it requires more than thoughts to make potential actual. We can engage the reasoning after we have been gifted with intuition but because we lack the will to execute whereby we have to channel every resource at our disposal and beyond us, if need be, we will only bless the memory with bitterness of the things that we failed to do.
It takes the will to get any idea from potential to actual. It takes the will to make the unseen to become seen. It takes doing the dirty work. It takes getting the hands dirty. It takes the gut to risk resources knowing full well that they may not come back after they have been expended.
Will is the can-do-attitude that separates those who will and those who will not; those who can and those who cannot. It is actually in your will that you are able to align with the promise of the possibility of all things. Your faith breeds the works by which you become a creator by the rare power of execution.
How does the will make things happen? Will starts with the basics of humility in service to document thoughts. The will identifies likeminds and sounds them out on the idea. The will engages through collaboration. The will, though aware of failure, betrayal and rejections, forges ahead regardless.
The will goes ahead to brainstorm on the resources required to execute the idea. This is within the process of implemention itself. The will pushes forward by gathering the resources, and works execution through consistent placing of block on top of block. The patience of placing the right block on each other is not commonplace. This virtue, like other sterling qualities, is actually going extinct.
The right block upon the other may mean that a previous block has to be brought down and reset before another one is placed on it. Imagine what it takes to erect a corner piece or corner-store. Imagine the skills, resources and other tools that are required to lay a solid foundation and sustain the same in building. This is the same with execution.
During the process, people management is at the top of resource management. Imagine what it takes to manage morale, when drive is getting low, when other resources are dwindling, and even when they are not, how they are effectively/economically managed to earn objectives and key results envisaged.
Someone, in the mould of the Blue Hat Thinker, keeps everyone focused on the goal. People get distracted. People get tired. But this person or group of persons keeps everyone focused on the goal. The same manages every other hat to ensure delivery to time and deadlines. These are critical.
There is a picture in the mind of the visionary from the outset. At each point of the execution funnel, how it is shaping out true to type, is kept in view. Extraneous ideas that are jumping in are chopped off and some that though were equally not envisaged, but found to be useful are inculcated into it. This is because we may never see 100% of the picture from the outset. But when we get to this point, it resonates with something within us.
This is just an idea of what it takes to birth an idea or ideas. Everyone of us has the will faculty. The will lays dormant if you do not develop it and direct its energy towards your endeavours. When you purposely direct your will towards your endeavours, you activate your will. That is the power of execution.
The drive or passion must be sustained. The value of resilience is present all through the process. The executor or project manager has to be assisted by the value of being relentless. This energy is not only brought to the table, it lives on the table.
The will dies to itself. It sacrifices itself to the treasure of execution in order to birth newness. And because people are not ready to die, they do not birth anything new. This is the unspoken reality that we are not ready to confront.
While in agreement with the position of Seth Godin on execution, I believe that execution does take more than just will. It takes the will that is developed and activated because we all have the will in us but we do not all have the decisiveness to put that will to work either because of fear or the lack of drive to keep pursuing the goal that we seek to achieve.
Something or many things have to be sacrificed to achieve goals and make dreams live, and it takes the iron will and determination to do so.
