Flawless Execution: Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief

How do we connect our strategy to our vision? Can bankers identify, in high definition detail, the bank they want to become to remain relevant to their constituencies, and translate this future bank vision into action?

Regular readers of Jeff For Banks know I recently read Flawless Execution by former Air Force pilot Jim "Murph" Murphy by my post about defining your High Definition Destination. Far be it from me to send multiple shout-outs to an Air Force guy. The Navy has more planes (GO NAVY!). But, as the book's title suggests, Murph has some interesting thoughts on execution that I think can help banks bring vision to the ground floor.

Murph outlines how pilots plan for missions in a model represented in the accompanying picture. Could this work for community financial institutions? Let's walk through an example.

Suppose the FIs vision, or "high definition destination" is to be the number one business bank in the counties served for businesses with less than $10 million in revenue. The strategy team identifies a few Strategic Objectives that are critical to achieving the vision. For example, one Strategic Objective could be to develop a robust, yet simple suite of products designed to make the business persons' lives easier.

In the Flawless Execution model, a team would be assembled with all functions critical to the execution of the Strategic Objective present... commercial and retail banking, IT, compliance, marketing, etc. A plan is developed with responsibilities and timing. The team completes the game plan, and disperses to execute, re-assembling for regular updates and inter-dependencies.

After the product suite is developed and launched, per the plan, the team comes back together for a debrief to dispassionately discuss surprises, hurdles, miscues, and successes. This debrief is critical to organizational learning, ensuring the next Strategic Objective is executed better than the last. Yet, in my experience, the debrief rarely happens. 

Part of the reason is the increasing lack of candor in banking, and our society as a whole. I dedicated a blog post to this subject over three years ago, and I haven't noticed much improvement. How do we construct a culture of continuous improvement if we do not recognize execution flaws and impediments through a candid, yet dispassionate and impersonal debrief process?

Fighter pilots debrief this way because flaws in plan execution could end up in tragedy. Get better or risk death tends to add greater urgency than get better or have your FI relegated to the dust heap of irrelevance. 

But, as the numbers bear out, FIs need to get better at execution or risk irrelevance.  

How do you execute and do you debrief?

~ Jeff

Bankers: What Is Your High Definition Destination?

Future Picture: "A high-definition picture that shows in great detail the future as you want it to be." Future Picture and its definition are from James D. Murphy's ("Murph") 2006 tome, Flawless Execution. I liked it so much, I e-mailed Murph at his consulting firm, Afterburner, for permission to quote from it.

Murph and his colleague, Will Duke, called me back. Since the 2006 book, their thought process has evolved. They created a more versatile version of Future Picture, one that can be applied to multiple industries with greater precision. They termed it High Definition Destination ("HDD") in their as-yet to be released book, Courage to Execute. 

In an excerpt of the book, HDD is described as follows:

" A HDD should be so described as to provide a beacon-like objective that drives the entire organization forward.  It should be clear and simple, yet high-definition."

In other words, Future Picture, and it's successor HDD, describe in vivid detail the organization you want to be. So vivid, in fact, that all levels of the organization know it, understand it, and can describe it in less than five minutes. 

I discussed with Will and Murph our industry's vision problem. Many if not most of our banks date back many generations, in simpler times when we had one branch that did all things banking to an entire town. Competition was limited and sometimes non-existent. So our vision started as something like this... Schmidlap National Bank. We're a bank. To the town of Schmidlap. 

Now things are more complex. We are in dozens if not hundreds of communities. Our products sometimes number in the hundreds. We compete with financial institutions that are located within those communities and outside of them. We don't just compete with banks, but also with credit unions (and vice versa), insurance companies, brokerage companies, virtual banks, and non-bank financial intermediaries. 

Yet our vision has evolved to something like this: Schmidlap National Bank. We're a bank. But not just in Schmidlap.

Don't believe me? Take this vision statement from an anonymous bank that I found randomly looking through bank vision statements on the web:

"Our vision is for [bank name] to build value by employing those human, financial and technological resources which will enable and insure its expansion, prosperity, and reputation for superior quality, performance and value returned to the communities, customers, team members and investors it serves."

How about that for a High Definition Destination? There's gotta be a yadda yadda yadda in there somewhere. Does this vision statement read like yours? Even a little bit? Does your vision provide that vivid picture where all employees know your HDD and make decisions and develop tactics to achieve it?

As Murph told me on the phone call, general vision gets general execution. Executing to achieve some general HDD promotes wasted effort. And minimizing wasted effort is critical to flawless execution.

So tell me, how specific is your vision? Do you have an HDD?

~ Jeff