Friday I checked in with most of my clients and prospects to see how the week had gone. What I found was that for many of them the week had done just that: “It had gone.” Many could not remember they had accomplished but they could remember everything that had gotten in their way. The recurring theme of the conversations was that they had been “putting out one fire after another” or “getting ready to get ready.” What was painfully missing from most conversations was the recounting of the items that had been executed. The overwhelming feeling was frustration at another week wasted.

These business owners have big dreams and plans but are frustrated by the fact that they rarely feel as if they are making progress toward their goals. What is missing from their plan is how they are going to execute. Execution, like most things in business, is very simple but not easy at all. There are some straightforward steps one can take to improve execution.

1. We need to know what is important in order to be able to work on it.

The infamous “To Do List:” Everyone knows that having a well-organized and thought-out list of tasks increases the likelihood that they will be done. It is best to schedule a block of several hours to plan out and prioritize the tasks for the month and then schedule the time in your daily calendar.

2. That which is scheduled has a better chance of getting done than that which is not.

We should enter every week with adequate time scheduled to accomplish the items we feel will move our business forward. If we schedule meetings, they tend to happen.

If we schedule problem-solving time, we tend to solve the problems.

Remember the last fire you had to put out? What about scheduling time to develop the systems needed to stop that from happening again? When you schedule time for the project, schedule

enough time to actually move the project forward. One of the clients I called was frustrated because he hadn’t been able to move forward on an important project that he had scheduled two and half hours that week to do. When I asked when that two and a half hour block was, he said it was actually 5 half-hour blocks. In fact, the time was 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM. The challenge with this scheduling was that by the time he sat down and got organized, it was time to stop! Schedule enough time in workable blocks to get done what is important.

3. That which is measured gets done.

We have a much better chance of accomplishing our tasks if there is a way to measure progress. We can develop a metric to measure almost anything and the process of figuring out the relevant metric many times actually helps us figure out the solution.

4. The process of reporting helps with the finishing of a project.

We all remember pulling an all-nighter in school getting ready for an exam or finishing a paper. This experience has taught us that deadlines that include reporting to someone else are a powerful motivator. Break up larger projects into smaller ones, with dates set to report the progress you are making.

Each of these steps is very simple. Each one will make every day, week, and month more productive but you will discover they are very hard to actually execute. The challenge is that the activities that move us forward (the pro-active ones) don’t come and demand our attention. The items that grab our attention are the “reactive” items: the phone call, the e-mail, the mini-crisis, and other people’s problems. Only when we grab the initiative can we move forward.

A Solution: The next time you are interrupted, don’t just handle the interruption. Write down each interruption you have while trying to keep to your schedule. Then during your planning time, pull out the list and schedule time to solve the problems. In that block of time, figure out a solution to each problem so you don’t have to deal with it again.

Grab control of your time and business. Become more pro-active and less re-active. And watch your ability to execute make a huge leap forward!