Do you have a stack of brilliant business ideas just waiting to be implemented? In this episode, Tonya Kubo and Gwen Bortner tackle the common problem of great business ideas that never get off the ground. They explore the gap between planning and execution, discussing the “squirrel factor,” the “messy middle,” and the crucial role of accountability in turning plans into reality. They provide actionable insights on prioritizing tasks, securing resources, and setting realistic goals to build a strong implementation engine for success. Tune in to learn how to finally bridge the gap between strategy and action and bring your business ideas to life.
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Bringing Your Business Ideas To Life
Why do brilliant business strategies often end up collecting dust? Have you ever asked yourself that question? That is what we are exploring. It’s that gap between planning and execution, the best-laid plans that never seem to turn out. We could talk about that gap between planning and execution and how to build an implementation engine that turns your ideas into reality.
Bridging The Gap Between Planning And Execution
I’m Tonya Kubo, joined yet again by my favorite business operations expert here, Gwen Bortner, and Gwen, I feel like you are the expert to be having this conversation with. Not that I interview anybody else on this show or talk to anybody else on this show specifically, but I’m glad that I can talk to you about this on this show because you are so good or naturally skilled at helping me at least, other people too, understand the difference between great ideas and ideas that are actionable. I see entrepreneurs all the time who excel at creating strategic plans, but can’t manage to get those plans into reality, and here’s where I’m going to start with you, Gwen. Why does that happen or at least, why do you think it makes it happen?
There are probably 2 or 3 overriding, high-level answers to this, and all of these things always have lots and lots of details, but the first is most entrepreneurs are very creative. We use the term visionary a lot. This means there are way more ideas than time, energy, money, and space to fill in any gap to implement all of them. Being able to sift through them and decide which one’s the one that we are going to do is one factor. A related, but slightly different factor is what we all call the squirrel factor. Which is we start down a path, and then we get to the part that’s not quite as fun and something that’s way more fun and way more shiny and way more new, and, “Whoops, squirrel.” We are now doing something else. That’s another piece.
The third is not having the tools, and when I say tools, it could be technology, but they could be people, there could be processes, there are all sorts of things to get them past what I’m going to call the squirrel point because everything has some version of the messy middle and from idea to full implementation always has to go through the messy middle, and there has to be a way to help through that. None of us do the messy middle well if we don’t have some support.
I’m a great starter and I’m a great finisher. I’m not a great slogger.
Very few people are, especially in the entrepreneurial space, which is part of the reason why we don’t want to hire entrepreneurs to help us through some of these things.
I was like, “Who do we hire?”
We hire the sloggers. That sounds negative. I don’t mean that at all. These people are amazing because they are good at doing the things that need to be done. They are like gears. We love gears. Sometimes that is part of the solution, but for entrepreneurs, that messy middle is practically an impassable chasm.
Implementation Success: Key Components For Effective Execution
What are the components of implementation success in your mind? What are the three critical areas that if you don’t have this, you are not going to be able to implement effectively or successfully?
The first is, in my mind, and this will be one of those cases, there would be lots of right answers, but in my mind, the first is having a short enough list that it can get done and this is where I’m talking about way too many ideas. It is discerning, prioritizing, sifting, whatever word that you want, to be able to pull that out. That’s one aspect.
The next is having the tools, the people, the processes, the places, to get through the messy middle, and knowing, entering it, not like with the hope that we’ll get through it, but saying, “We know we are going to hit it. We aren’t necessarily sure exactly when we are going to hit, but we know we are going to hit it and this is how we are going to get through that.” For me, because we talk about it all the time, this is accountability. This is about having a real, true accountability process/system in place to be able to get through that messy middle piece.
Another element that is important in this, and we talk about this during our quarterly planning process with our clients, and we have mentioned it before on the show, is what we call the good, better, best goals. The other thing that happens as part of the strategy to the implementation is we dream big, which is great. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big, but when we set a goal where everything has to go perfectly for us to reach it, not that we weren’t successful, but feeling successful becomes so narrow that it makes getting through the messy middle even that much harder because it’s like, “One thing went wrong and now I know that I’m probably not going to hit it,” and all the self-talk, all the things happen.
There's nothing wrong with dreaming big, but when we set a goal where everything has to go perfectly for us to reach it, the chance of us feeling successful diminishes. Share on XWhere, when we talk about good, better, best goals, good goals are we are going toward this and we expect an 85% to 90% likelihood we’ll hit this. The better is somewhere in the middle, usually in the 50/50 range, and the best was that pie-in-the-sky dream we had. Which usually, for most entrepreneurs, this is the case, that’s where they are always going. We know it’s a 10% or less likelihood, but we still have it because sometimes all the planets do align. We don’t stop when we hit the good goal, we move on to the better goal. We move on to the best goal.
Is there anything else because that’s four?
There are probably others, but those are good for the moment.
What I heard is the three critical components for implementation success, in this case, would be having a short enough list that it can get done. I would define that as saying you have very clear priorities. Not everything can be a priority. You’ve got that nice shortlist, that way it can get done. You’ve got sufficient resources. You’ve got the right number and the right makeup of people, tools, of everything you need in order to achieve that short list of goals for your strategic plan. Then you’ve got that adequate accountability.
You’ve got some mechanism in place that is checking in consistently to make sure not that you are doing what you said you would do, but that the project keeps moving forward. If it gets stalled for any reason, that part of having adequate accountability is exploring why, what happened, and what’s preventing it, so that those things can be controlled for. Is that accurate so far?
So far.
Finally, what you threw in there, was making sure that the goals have good, better, best targets. I love this, and I have told this story a million times. I don’t know if I have mentioned it on the show yet, but I, in many cases, work with clients who want to set 1 goal, and their 1 goal is based on 25% growth or their 1 goal is based on a specific revenue target. In many cases, they don’t take their historical data into account when they set the goal. What that leads to is, if the only win is 25% growth year over year and the best you’ve ever done is 5%.
You are setting yourself up to feel like a failure. You are not a failure at 5% growth, but you feel like a failure, which is where the real problem lies.
Achieving Goals With Accountability And Guidance
We need clear priorities, we need sufficient resources, we need adequate accountability, and we need good, better, best targets so that we give ourselves multiple places to win. From there, you probably work with more clients on implementation than anybody else I know.
Which is ironic because I don’t do anything.
You don’t do implementation, but you support the entrepreneur in achieving the goals that they say they want. That’s when people hire you. People hire you all the time because and this is because I have sat in those meetings where they are like this has been on my vision board for the last few years and I don’t feel like I’m any closer to it now than I was years ago. Maybe you’ll see something I won’t see.
What always cracks me up, Gwen, is you are the first person to be like, and then they will tell you, and this is something else we hear, “I accomplished more this last quarter than I have accomplished any year prior,” and you are like, “That’s funny because I don’t feel like I did anything. I don’t feel like I worked that hard,” but it’s that process of supporting them, implementing the goals that they have set out to that they haven’t had before.
We talked about the 4 things, and the hardest of the 4 because it’s the part that folks are less aware of and why it’s important is the third. It’s the accountability piece. When you are the boss, CEO, owner, or entrepreneur, whatever title you like to use for yourself in this role, who’s holding you accountable? I was having a conversation, and they said, “I’m self-accountable.” I said, “Where did you hear that?” She said, “That was out of Brene Brown.” Brene Brown is a super smart woman.
I would say self-accountability is not a thing. I don’t have the opportunity. Maybe someday I will. I would love to have this discussion with Brene Brown to say, “Tell me what you define as self-accountability because I don’t believe it’s possible because we can be dependable or effective. There are all sorts of things, but accountability requires actual people’s feedback, two-way, and we can’t do that with ourselves.”
We need another person or group. It could be people, doesn’t have to be a person, but we need another living, breathing, thoughtful entity as part of real, true accountability. A lot of people have conflated accountability with getting things done. That’s not the same either. That’s doing tasks, that’s being dependable which is also important. Not saying that’s not a useful thing, because that’s a super useful thing, but still different because the accountability is saying, “When we are not making or taking the action that we said we were going to take.”
It’s not saying, “Shame on you, bad person.” That’s a whole different thing. That’s also not accountability. It is saying, “Why? What is the situation that’s preventing this from moving forward?” It’s no longer the thing we need to do, but we haven’t consciously said that yet. It’s not like, “You need to do it.” It’s like, “Maybe you don’t need to do it,” but then that means let’s take it off the list.
Other times it’s because of things like, “I have got way too many things on the list.” We need to winnow down the list and/or prioritize the list. Sometimes it’s because “I’m not sure what the next step is.” That’s a whole different problem too but real accountability is a reflection process, not a judgmental process. You can reflect in a mirror, but you can’t reflect in the way that we are talking about accountability without another person.
Real accountability is a reflection process, not a judgmental process. Share on XI feel like you ran us through a whole laundry list.
I probably did because that’s what I do.
Common implementation pitfalls. What I heard is a lack of true accountability, because like you said, true accountability is a process of reflection. It’s not a process of judgment. If you struggle with implementation, it could simply be because nobody’s checking in with you and nobody’s checking in with you in a way that helps you reflect versus makes you feel bad, or you allow yourself to be made to feel bad about what you did or didn’t do. That was one pitfall that you shared.
Another is, I’m going to call it overwhelm, although I don’t think that’s the best word, but there’s all this stuff on the list and not all of it needs to be done by you. Not all of it may need to be done right now. Not all of it may need to be done at all. That’s a pitfall. We set the strategic plan and we were like, “We’re going to do all these things.” Push comes to shove and we never stop to look at, “Thing one we thought was going to be a week of work. Thing one turned into three weeks of work. You and me, we have talked about it on the show before. It started with, “We need a logo for this brand-new show we are launching,” to, and “We are going to completely rebrand and redo our website.” We did not start there at all, and yet there we were.
There’s that piece. There’s all this stuff, and not all of it is essential, but then there’s also sometimes you go through the whole list and there is too much to do and it hasn’t been prioritized. Think about it, in our case, Gwen, how many times did you and me have conversations as this new show logo project became a beast in and of itself where we had conversations about what had to come first?
All the time, and also what had to come off the list and what had to shift sometimes in big ways. Sometimes it was timelined and sometimes it was forever, and until we got there, we wouldn’t have known that was the conversation that needed to be had which is also part of it.
It’s like we couldn’t have predicted that. The final pitfall you shared is sometimes you are stuck. You don’t know the next step to take. You may know who to ask the next step to take. If you are a solopreneur or you are a business owner who doesn’t have a team that provides true thought partnership, there may be nobody there to help you get unstuck.
A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have someone who can provide true thought partnership because of a couple of elements. One is their brains work differently than a lot of the people that they are going to hire that are going to be good at the things that they are hiring them for. The conversation is always missing the mark on both sides. Not that anyone’s bad. Not that anyone’s not having good conversations, it’s nature. That’s part of it.
The other is a level of experience and knowledge. We talked about this a few episodes back. The idea of a cornerman is one of those ideas of someone who’s seen enough things, even if they aren’t like the expert in your industry, but because they have seen enough things, they can extrapolate appropriately and help you say, “What about A, B, or C? Let’s think about those as the next steps.”
Usually, when someone gives you 2 or 3 choices, it’s like, “B is exactly the right thing that I need to do,” and it’s like, “Great, go do B.” That’s the piece that a lot of times where people start feeling like their accountability process, whatever it is, failing, is they are either in an organization where all they are doing is saying, “Did you do the task or did you not do the task?” If you didn’t do the task, there’s a shame on you, or if you did do the task, woo-hoo. We always want a woo-hoo on the task, but instead of “shame on you if you didn’t,” it’s like, “Let’s figure out what’s happening there.” That’s a different thing.
The other thing, a lot of times, is that accountability systems that people have is they have got people that are at their level or maybe a tiny bit above or a tiny bit below. It’s like they don’t have enough other resources to do that unblock piece. You feel like you’ve got accountability, but it’s back to them, they may be asking the right questions, but they can’t help you with the answers, which is a different type of accountability.
How To Assess Your Implementation Capabilities
That’s helpful. How do you recommend, we have got a reader here and they are going, “That’s me all the time. I set great goals. I have plans. I can never quite make them happen.” We have given them all these criteria, clear priorities, sufficient resources, and adequate accountability. We have told them the common pitfalls. We have told them how to avoid them. What can they do to assess their implementation capabilities? What do they need to do to survey what’s possible for them right now?
All the questions are usually hard. Some folks can ask themselves those hard questions, but often you need an outside person to ask those hard questions, and you want that to be someone that you feel like you trust because hard questions make you uncomfortable, and if it’s someone I barely know, it’s like, “You don’t get to ask me that.” We could go back to our 531 conversation we had some time ago with you. I asked you hard questions because we worked together, and we have known each other for a long time. You trusted me that I wasn’t going to just strip you naked and throw you out in a highly uncomfortable way, but I did ask you uncomfortable questions, and I still commend you for being willing to do that.
That is part of that process. That is part of that accountability is someone else asking some hard questions and saying, “You’ve listed all of these things, but which of these do you want to do?” Asking it sometimes in 2 or 3 different ways to see if we start getting consistent answers or inconsistent answers and sometimes you’ll have someone in your circle who’s your bestie or whatever that can do that. Some folks will try to do it with other family members, which I’m always a little hesitant about because often they’ve got their agenda, which they may not even realize they have their agenda, but sometimes they can. I’m not saying that that’s an absolute no either, and then other times you do need to bring in an outside resource.
One of my clients, who is a past client, reached out and said, “I want to do an exercise with you.” She’s bringing me in for an hour. I’m not expecting to start working with her on an ongoing basis, but she knows that outside perspective is going to provide her value in looking at some goals, some prepping, some accountability, asking her some hard questions, and so it doesn’t necessarily have to be an ongoing relationship.
This is also why we have what we call the Weekly Course of Action as our foundational piece with all of our clients. Some folks do it only as the weekly course of action. They are not working with me on a private client basis or in my group program, but the group program and my private clients also do the WCA because it’s a way to hold accountability and to see what’s going on in an asynchronous way that turns out to be exceedingly productive.
Your comment is, “We see people all the time.” These are people that are only doing the WCA. They are not working with me in a group program. They are not working with me on a private client type of basis, and yet they are also seeing huge results because of that accountability knowing that someone’s going to look at it, knowing someone is there if they’ve got a question. Knowing all of these elements is making a difference for them to be able to move their needle going forward.
I like what you pointed out because what I always tell people, it’s like, “Nobody is too good for accountability.” That’s the reason everybody does the Weekly Course of Action because I do think some people try to, obviously not our clients, because our clients are superlative. Let me make that clear.
They are flipping amazing.
Actionable Steps To Build Your Implementation Engine
Some people try to buy their way out of accountability. That doesn’t fly with us simply because if you are not ready for regular accountability, there are probably other things that are important to move your business forward that you are not ready for. Now I was going to ask you, Gwen, like, “Now is the part of the show where you give us practical steps for building and maintaining your implementation engine,” but I feel like you’ve given us those steps throughout the episode this time, but are there any you want to call out like step 1, 2, and 3 in a particular order?
I think the order I gave is the four big things, and the first is staying aware of how many things are on the plate. We talk about that when we do our quarterly tune-up with our clients, if people are like, “I have got five goals,” it’s like that’s probably somewhere between 2 and 4 goals too many because we want you to stay focused.
To me, that’s also part of accountability, quite honestly, is staying focused. Once you’ve gotten clear on what those are, then it is about the squirrel factor. Are we adding new things? We are the first to admit, we aren’t saying that you can’t, but we are saying it has to be a trade because sometimes we go down a path and it’s like, “This is not what I thought. I want to do something different,” and we wouldn’t have known without getting partway down the path. I don’t think you have to finish the path. You can stop and turn left there.
Nobody wins awards for being a martyrs in entrepreneurship.
They do not, but we need to be clear, we are turning left, which means we are no longer going straight. That needs to be communicated fully throughout the whole organization and all of those pieces. That’s the second piece of it. It’s okay to get excited about a shiny object so long as it’s the thing you want to do and realize you are trading that for something else.
What you’re talking about is that if you want a truly successful implementation plan, you’ve got to be willing to consistently evaluate what the plan was, and the steps you’re taking to get there, and then make adjustments as necessary. One of our clients has started their quarter so they have online courses. They started their quarter going, “We have to update your courses.”
Shortly thereafter, they set a goal to launch one brand-new redesigned course every single month. They were like, “That’s what I’m going to do. It’s going to be awesome.” However, they discovered they had to switch platforms because the course platform they were on wasn’t going to provide the student experience they wanted. Yet, in their mind, they were still thinking, “I have to redesign, re-launch, market, and sell one course every single month.” In the process of their weekly reflection, they recognized that migration alone, when you have a bunch of courses, is a three-month process.
It’s like the marketing thing that we did.
It’s exactly like that. I share this because we have not cornered the market on the best-laid plans, and neither have our clients. Neither has anybody reading. Everybody in business goes through this, and that’s why the accountability piece is both so powerful for business owners and also so foreign.
The accountability piece is so powerful for business owners but also so foreign. Share on XThat’s where that next step is so important for ongoing accountability because ongoing accountability deals with the messy middle. It’s how we get through the messy middle to say, “No, you are making progress. It doesn’t feel like it, but ” Sometimes it is the attaboy, as it were. It’s the attagal. It’s, “You are making progress. Just keep going.” I know it doesn’t feel like it, but keep going. Sometimes it’s like, “You are stuck. Let me help you. Let me give you a shove from the back because we need to do that.” The accountability is that messy middle piece of how we get through that. That is the big piece. The other part that ties into that and that’s where the accountability helps is, “Do I have the right tools, the right people, the right things to get where I need to be? Can I do my good, better, best goal, or do I not?”
The good-better-best applies to that whole thing of saying, “Am I setting something realistic, or am I setting myself up?” Like I said, not for failure, but to feel like I’m failing. Most of the time, when I talk to someone who feels like they failed, it’s like, “That doesn’t hit me as a real failure.” It feels like it to you, but I don’t think that’s a full-on failure.
It’s where you say, “Being human isn’t a failure. Not being able to predict the future? Not a failure.” Those are not character flaws. That is how life continues to life.
It’s your example of 5% growth versus 25% growth, and 5% growth is not a failure. Bankruptcy might be a failure.
Possibly. Burning your business to the ground, going back to our very first episode, could be a failure.
Potentially be a failure. Even that may not be a failure, setting this goal and not achieving it may not be a failure.
That brings us to the end of this episode where we’ve been highlighting how important it is to bridge the gap between great plans and putting those plans into action going from planning to implementation. If you would like support in examining other aspects of your business, like Gwen and I, we have a little something special for you. We have Insight to Impact, a premium weekly email subscription that helps you gain clarity on your business, one reflection at a time.
Each Friday, you’ll receive a thought-provoking question designed to help you examine specific aspects of your business, and when you respond, you’ll get personal feedback to help you implement positive change. Consider it light accountability. It’s a great test to see if you are ready for that true reflective process of accountability. You can head over to From Insight to Impact to learn more.
Mentioned In This Episode
- Weekly Course of Action
- From Insight to Impact
- 531 Strategy For Goal Setting: Achieve Your Dreams, Bigger Than Imagined
- Is Burning Down Your Business Really the Only Way Out?
- True Accountability: The Secret Weapon for Sustainable Business Success
- Your Cornerman: The Person Every Entrepreneur Needs (Beyond A Business Coach)
- Accelerate Your Consistency and Productivity with True Accountability
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.