Written by Brett Duncan. Brett specializes in helping direct selling companies evolve into modern social selling models while still maintaining the culture and essence of who they are and what makes them different. He is co-founder and managing partner of Strategic Choice Partners, a business development firm that helps direct selling companies take their next steps.
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Direct selling has no shortage of great ideas.
Spend an afternoon with a group of executives, and you’ll hear plenty of them. Add a new customer bonus. Make checkout easier. Launch a skincare line. Build a first-30-days program for new distributors. Create a customer referral program. Give field leaders a better way to follow up with prospects.
And you know what? A lot of those ideas really are good. Some could make a significant difference in the future of the company. But having a great idea and being able to execute it are two very different things.
One of my favorite quotes from Mary Kay Ash puts it perfectly: “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”
An idea is only as good as its execution. Great ideas executed poorly produce weak results. Decent ideas executed well can produce good results. Yet we can spend so much time getting excited about what we could do that we never get honest enough about what it will take to actually do it. As executives, we have to take responsibility for both.
You Can’t Motivate Your Way Around Reality
I believe in vision. I believe in developing people. And I certainly believe a good leader can help a team accomplish more than it thought possible. But I also believe we sometimes expect motivation to make up for things it simply cannot replace.
We underestimate the workload. We overestimate how quickly someone can develop a capability they don’t currently have. We assume that if we explain the vision clearly enough, coach someone a little more, or communicate how badly we want it, the work will somehow get done.
Sometimes the person we’re counting on has never done anything like this before. Sometimes they have the experience, but absolutely no room in their week to apply it. And sometimes we’ve asked people to push through so many times that there’s very little push left.
Direct selling companies can ask a lot of their people. That willingness to rally, stretch and make things happen is a strength. But when extraordinary effort becomes the permanent operating plan, people wear out.
Meanwhile, today’s business hasn’t agreed to pause while we build tomorrow’s. Customers still need help. The field still needs communication. Products still need to ship. The next promotion still needs to launch.
A strong vision for the future requires a strong grasp of the business you have to run today.
Ten Good Objectives Can Become One Big Problem
Let’s say you identify ten areas where your company genuinely needs to improve. You discuss them with your team, establish objectives and assign responsibility. They all deserve attention, so they all make the plan.
It feels productive. You’ve identified the problems and committed to addressing them. Then the work starts.
Three projects need the same technology resources. Two others need decisions from the same executive. Marketing is supporting almost all of them. The scope of one changes what another needs to deliver. Pretty soon, the delay of one starts causing delays across the others.
I’ve made this mistake myself. The initiatives were good. They were needed. They also competed with each other in ways I hadn’t fully accounted for.
When you have seven, eight or ten strategic priorities, how does anyone know what actually comes first? Especially when the same people are responsible for moving most of them forward?
I’m a strong believer in concentrating on one or two major strategic initiatives at a time. Maybe three, depending on the company and the work involved. Those are the major changes receiving concentrated resources and executive attention, alongside the ongoing business.
You may be able to accomplish far more over a year by completing a few things in sequence than by keeping ten things perpetually underway.
Your Projects Are Making Decisions for Each Other
The problem goes beyond sharing people and budgets. Your initiatives may also depend on decisions being made inside other initiatives.
Consider a company improving its ecommerce experience while also reviewing compliance requirements across its markets. Depending on those requirements, decisions could affect checkout steps, payment processing or the information customers must provide. The ecommerce team can work hard and still find itself revisiting work because the requirements keep changing. Its ability to finish depends on decisions happening elsewhere.
Or consider updating your compensation plan while reviewing product margins and the product lifecycle. That review could lead you to change commissionable volume on certain products. Those changes, in turn, could affect the assumptions behind the compensation design. Both efforts may be worthwhile. They may even belong together. But someone has to understand how they connect and establish the order in which decisions need to happen.
Before committing to an initiative, ask: What must be decided first? What other work will this change? Who needs to be involved in both?
Focusing on fewer initiatives still requires understanding the bigger picture. Otherwise, you can give one project your full attention while leaving its most important dependency unresolved.
Which One Goes First? That’s Your Job.
I wish there were a simple formula for choosing the right priority. There isn’t.
Sometimes a quick win is exactly what your company needs. It may rank fifth in theoretical importance, but finishing it could build confidence, free up resources or clear a persistent distraction.
Sometimes you need to concentrate on the biggest opportunity and make room for the work required to pursue it.
And sometimes your business has a leak that needs fixing before you invest more in growth. You have to understand where the business is losing ground and what addressing it would make possible.
One useful way to frame the discussion might be: What’s one leak we need to plug, and what’s one growth opportunity we need to pursue?
Your answer will depend on your business. Reading that situation and making the tradeoffs is part of the executive’s responsibility.
Once you choose, be clear about what will wait. If every other initiative keeps its original deadline and resource expectations, your team hasn’t actually gained any focus.
Good People Still Need the Right Capabilities
Even a well-chosen priority can fail if the company lacks the people and experience to execute it.
Ultimately, the executive is responsible for the team. Whether you hired everyone yourself or inherited the organization, you’re responsible for determining what the business needs now. That includes looking at the positions themselves. As the business evolves, a role that served you well for years may need to change. You may need a capability, or an entire position, that your company has never had before.
Give people opportunities to grow. Coach them. Support them. Also recognize when the work requires experience they don’t yet have, and bring that experience into the business. That could mean hiring, changing responsibilities or bringing in experienced outside support. The right approach depends on the need. What matters is making a deliberate decision about how the work will get done well.
“They’re good people doing the best they can” deserves respect. It also deserves an honest follow-up: Have we equipped them to deliver what we’re asking?
We can appreciate effort while addressing a gap in execution. Leaving that gap unresolved can hurt both the business and the people trying to carry it.
Before you commit your company to its next great idea, get specific. What will it take? Who can deliver it? What does it depend on? What will have to wait? Then give implementation the attention it deserves.
Your customers and distributors will experience what your company actually delivers. Make sure you’re as committed to getting that right as you were excited about the idea in the first place.
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