Let’s face it…it’s tough to be a leader today. Demands are high, resources are limited and there seems to never be enough time to get everything done.

What is even more challenging is when you roll out that important initiative to your team, and you just don’t see the results you expected.

You’ve made the investment to train and develop your people to ensure they have what they need to succeed. And yet as a team, you still fall short of expected results.

When I talk to business executives they all share the same frustrations:

• We have a solid curriculum, but we just fall short on execution…
• We train our people and things never seem to stick…
• We spend time and money every year developing our employees and never see a solid return on those invested efforts…
• We incentivize our team members and still can’t manage to get them motivated…

Sound familiar?

You see, most organizations overlook one incredibly simple, yet highly effective detail: EXECUTION.

Getting people to execute means creating a mindset around relevancy and reality with everything you roll out.  You must ensure you are connecting the dots with your people, showing how this is relevant to them, what it looks like to be successful, and the impact it has on them and the business when implemented successfully. And remember to keep it real to their everyday environment!

All businesses, in some way, expose and inform their people on how to be more effective through skills, behaviors and attitudes. And, sometimes their people leave with a high level of understanding. But to ‘understand’ and to ‘execute’ are two completely different things.

Most companies implement great plans for training and development, and even bring in the best of the best to work with their people…but without first creating that mindset shift, demonstrating relevance, reality and practical application, most of it never really sticks.

So, I challenge you to stop the madness of just rolling things out to your people until you can guarantee the expected results through execution. Take a step back and ask yourself:

• Is our purpose, vision and message clear and consistent?
• Does this effectively communicate how they will personally benefit and how they impact the business?
• Does this create experiences that are relevant and real to their environment?
• Is there adequate opportunity for coaching and feedback?

When you improve the execution process within your program, all of the skills, behaviors and attitudes you introduce will have a much higher adoption rate, business impact and ROI.