Execute or die
One of the things that separates the truly great companies from the rest is the ability to really execute. We've all seen them, those companies that seem to sweat every detail, that leave nothing to chance, that do everything right.
So what is execution?
This has stumped me for a couple of weeks. I got this far in my newsletter and then said, Whoa! I KNOW what execution is (doesn't everybody?) but what can I say about it?
Then I thought about my experiences racing cars. It's easy to think that the fastest driver or car always wins, but this just isn't the case. Usually the big trophies go to the team that executes best. So for fun, let's use a little metaphor and talk about execution for racing:
- Sweating the details
- In lowly club racing, you need tires, you buy tires, you throw them on the race car. Then you go get a beer. My buddy Dave Gaylord taught me to measure each tire's circumference first, because they're not all the same. If they're close, you can stretch the smaller tires to match the biggest one. Tiny differences, if you don't fix them, can alter the handling of the car. A detail, sure, but it might mean a hundredth of a second per lap. Get enough of those hundredths, and you might start to see some noticeable improvement in lap times. That same Dave once beat me for the pole in qualifying by .001 seconds. See?
- Consistency
- I know guys who can rip off one miracle lap faster than anyone, but the next lap is junk. The very best drivers are consistent: you can put a watch on them and lap after lap they're within a few hundredths of a second unless they run into traffic. It doesn't do you any good to pull ahead of the competition if you're going to throw your lead away in the next lap.
- Anticipation
- Real race driving isn't as much about reaction time as it is about anticipation. At speeds in excess of 100 mph with cars just inches apart, nobody's reaction times are good enough to avoid trouble. You have to anticipate what is going to happen, and to do that you have to think from the point of view of your competitors.
- Car control
- From the stands, it looks like the cars are just circling the track lap after lap. Nothing seems to change. But from the driver's seat, the track changes all the time. Stuff leaks out of engines and radiators. Dirt and gravel get scattered. Sometimes it rains. There's patches and dips and bumps and potholes and you name it. All that stuff can suddenly make the car want to go somewhere you'd rather it didn't. Without car control skills it's going to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. But the good drivers, the ones that win races, can save it before it gets too out of hand. Real car control can keep you from spinning. How do you learn real car control? By spinning…
- Testing
- Pro teams test constantly. They take the car, and the team, with tons of fresh tires, to the track and drive lap after lap. They change something, like the camber, and check the lap times. Change tires and check lap times. Change shock settings and check lap times. They build their setups on data, collected painfully and slowly, and always carefully documented. That data represents one of the chief assets of a race team.
- Planning
- A good driver is always planning the next pass. And there's always someone to pass: if you're not in front you have to pass everybody ahead of you to get there. If you are in front you'll catch some back markers before the end of the race and have to pass them. You have to know where you want to pass someone and set it up maybe one or two laps in advance.
- Making do
- Sometimes you're out on slicks and it starts to rain. In a 30 minute sprint race there's no time to change to rain tires, so you drive in the rain on slicks. That means you change your line, you change your race plan, you deal with what you have to.
- Improvising
- If you're at the track and something breaks and you don't have a replacement, see “Anticipation” and “Planning” above. Do better next time. As for now, remember “A bad idea that works is better than a good one that doesn't.” So jury rig something, steal something off a rental car or the tow truck, make one out of garden implements with a Swiss Army knife, whatever you have to do. There's no points given for staying in the pits.
- Logistics
- A race team, like an army, travels on its stomach. And a good team manager makes sure that there's always food and drink, that everybody has a dry bed to sleep in, that the gas jugs are full, and the crew radios have fully charged batteries.
- Guts
- There are times when you just have to take a breath and go for it. An opportunity presents itself and the decision to do or not do is only a fraction of a second. Although it's a team sport, it's the driver's butt in the seat, and he's the one that risks injury. He and he alone makes those calls. Get too greedy and you risk collecting another car, and there goes the race. Too timid and those opportunities are lost forever. Great drivers seem to have great instincts about what to do and when.
Either racing is a lot like business or business is a lot like racing. I'm not sure which. But you're out there on the track, your competitors are around you, you're trying to beat all of them, you have to take risks, you need a great team, and you can get hurt.
Sound familiar?
