The struggle is real: the implementation gap, that frustrating space between knowing what to do and actually doing it, plagues us all. Join Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo as they dissect the implementation gap, exploring why knowing what to do doesn’t always translate into action. They delve into the common culprits: perfectionism, lack of energy, unclear next steps, and the fear of making the wrong decision. Gwen and Tonya stress accountability in bridging the gap between knowledge and action, highlighting the role of self-awareness, the “messy middle,” and understanding the difference between data and personal experience in achieving success.
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Closing The Implementation Gap: How To Get Things Done
The Implementation Gap: Overcoming Knowledge Vs. Action
Have you ever noticed how much business advice you already know? You could probably write a book about what you should be doing in your business, and yet somehow that knowledge is not translating to consistent action. Gwen and I are going to be talking about why knowing what to do isn’t enough and, more importantly at least for me and for you, how bridging the gap between knowledge and implementation matters most. We are tackling this challenge that affects almost every business owner, which is that gap between knowledge and action. I would call that the implementation gap. Gwen, tell me from your perspective how you see this manifest. Clients, yourself, other people go for it.
We are going to use me as my best example.
I was hoping you would do that, but I didn’t want to throw you under the bus.
No.I live under the bus. It is so easy, particularly if you are curious, if you like learning things it is so easy to get caught up in learning the next thing and getting so excited about it and I’m going to go do it and usually, we will take at least a step toward the thing but that’s a long way from doing the thing or fully implementing the thing. For most of us, this is what we would call a squirrel issue because before we have a chance to get too much further there’s something new that we find out about and what about that? We should go check that out and that sounds like that’s going to solve this problem and then we go down to the next thing and the next.
Like I said, I’m as guilty as everyone else. I probably do a tiny bit better only because I have become so self-aware of it. I will note that I’m doing this thing. Doesn’t stop me necessarily from doing it, however. The knowledge is not the same as the action and how you opened this is so true. Most of us know lots and lots of things. Sometimes, what we don’t know is how to do the thing.
Most of us know a lot of things, but sometimes, what we don't know is how to do them. Share on XI will use how you and I work together. I understand a lot about marketing. I have read more about marketing than a lot of people have because I felt very inadequate in my marketing knowledge and so I would read and read all the time. Various things I would try, but I often didn’t understand what it was trying to do or what the details were in getting it implemented and I would get frustrated pretty early on, pretty consistently, and so then I’d figure that’s not working. I’d go try something else.
That’s the case for a lot of us because a lot of us get knowledge in what I’m going to call snippets. Snippets being a book, a keynote, a class, anything where we are getting a piece of it and often what we hear is we hear that, and it’s like, “I know what that means,” and we go to start to do it, but the reality is we don’t know what that means. We know a little bit of what that means, but being able to get beyond that entry level, that starting point, is so much harder.
One piece that’s important is that a lot of us are attracted to entrepreneurship because it rewards us for growth. If you are at the bottom of the ladder in a corporate environment, nobody wants you to get too big for your britches. They want you to be at that lower level but as an entrepreneur, you are rewarded or at least you are complimented on the books you read, the spaces you are in.
What that can lead to is diving into “Just in case education” versus “Just in time education.” For instance, I have listened to a lot of speakers talk about scaling a business from $500,000 to $1 million. This is information that is useful to me in supporting some of my clients, but this is not information that is personally useful to me at this stage of my business.
I would be much more suited to training that would tell me how to make my first $150,000. That would be much more appropriate to me and you didn’t say this, but this is what I see happening sometimes if we have spent so much time learning about businesses or solving problems that are five steps ahead of us, it prevents us from doing the critical steps to get there.
That is gold because that’s true. We don’t realize that sometimes those initial steps are the most critical steps because it’s like, “I want to have $1 million business.” I’m going to act like I have $1 million business. Sorry, people. That is not the way this game works. There are other foundational things that have to be in place for that to happen.
Sometimes those foundational pieces are way less sexy, way less fun, way less all of the things that the education, the book, the conversation is talking about. It’s like if I keep doing that thing, then I’m going to get there. It’s like, “You are not going to get there because it’s assuming these other 6 steps have already happened, and you’ve only done 1 of those 6 steps.” There are certain things you can’t skip, or if you do, you are going to pay a giant price in a different way later.
Embracing The Messy Middle In Business
I was in a workshop for writers, and there was one individual who was struggling with a specific story. Should the story be in chapter 3, or should the story be in chapter 7? The facilitator asked some questions like transition paragraphs and what did you write before? What came out is this person had not written any words. The facilitator was like, “You are spending an awful lot of time organizing chapters that don’t exist yet. What you should be doing is writing the words out. You can always organize them later.” What you are bringing up is how we can do this in business.
That is a beautiful example because that’s exactly the thing but I want it to be perfect when I get there. Sorry. It doesn’t ever get to be perfect when you get there. That’s not the way it works and you have to have all of the messy middle.
The messy middle I don’t think people appreciate how many valuable lessons live in the messy middle.
The messy middle is super important. It’s not fun, it’s messy, but there are huge amounts of learning that happen in the messy middle.
The messy middle is incredibly important. It’s not fun—it’s messy—but it’s where significant learning happens. Share on XCan you think of something that you learned in a messy middle?
Technically, I should be able to think of 1,000 things.
Sometimes you can think of so many, you can’t think of one.
One of the messy middle things is that cashflow matters all the time. Early on in one of my businesses, I did not pay attention to the cashflow issue. I kept thinking, “If I sell more, it’s going to take care of itself and it’s like, no. That’s not the way that it works. It feels like it should work that way, but there were other issues related to the cash flow that prevented that from being a true statement.
That’s one I can think of right off the top of my head but the messy middle always has lessons that we have to learn. A lot of times, the messy middle is learning about who are our right people, whether they are our client right people or our employee support people, contractors however you want to describe them and understanding that people’s definition changes over time.
I’m thinking from a marketing perspective, messy middle stuff, messaging. I can’t even tell you how many people I have talked to over the years who’ve been like, “One day, when I’m a grown-up business owner, I’m not going to trip over my words. One day, when I’m a grown-up business owner, I will have this nailed,” and I’m like, “You are so cute. Tell me what you mean when you say grown-up business owner because I will tell you that this is an ongoing struggle for everybody all the time because even if your offer doesn’t change, even if your business doesn’t change, how people respond to how you talk about it evolves over time. It evolves with current events. It evolves with how society evolves.
Those are one of those things where you’ve never arrived, and the only way to truly get that intersection with your ideal client is to continue testing it over time and to pay attention when it works and how long it’s working. Then you have to pay close attention when it stops working. It’s not one of those parts of your business that you get to put on a shelf.
The only way to truly find that intersection with your ideal client is to keep testing over time and pay attention to when it works, how long it works, and when it stops working. Share on XIdentifying Roadblocks For Business Owners
Gwen, we have talked about the knowledge gap or the implementation gap as it relates to getting too far ahead of ourselves with our business, but now I’d like to shift our focus a little bit to the business owner that knows what they should be doing right now, is accurately describing what they should be doing right now, but they are not doing it. What do you think gets in their way?
These are things that we see pop up all the time in our weekly accountability process, the weekly course of action. We see it on different people’s sheets at different times with different specifics, but it boils down to these pieces. One of them is I know what I need to be doing, but I truly don’t know the action to take. I’m going to work on bookkeeping because everyone has to deal. It’s a common problem.
I know I need to be doing my bookkeeping, but I’m not doing it on a regular basis. Why is that? We have to start digging into it, but often it’s because I’m not sure how to choose the right software application to start using for accounting. Once I get past that, then I may be able to start doing the things that I need to do but that’s a legitimate concern because there’s not one option out there. There are multiple options, and they all have pros and cons and all the rest of it.
Sometimes we know we need to be using the accounting system. This is not rocket science by a long shot, but we don’t know how to take that first step. That’s one issue and related to that but I’m going to keep it as one is that perfectionist fear of what if I make a wrong decision? My answer always is, we can make another decision later on. That’s always my answer. There are very few things that we can’t decide or redecide at another point in time. That’s one piece.
Another piece is, we talked about energy in our last episode, but it’s like, I don’t have energy for this thing. It’s not something that I’m comfortable with. It’s not something I enjoy. It’s not something, fill in the blank. Back to bookkeeping a perfect example for most people and so unless I am forced to do it by some outside driver often in the business world, it is tax time then I will sit down and do all of the work that I have to do because I have to do it.
There are legal ramifications. There are serious issues but to maintain it on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis, there is no major ramification in my world that I acknowledge. I would argue that there’s always a major ramification in a world where I’m bookkeeping, but that I’m willing to acknowledge and so I find other things that need to be done because we are entrepreneurs. The list is long. The list never ends. It’s easy to say, I will get to that later, and later doesn’t come until there is some very hard deadline.
The third reason, which is related to both of those two, is not having a method of accountability. We are talking about our definition of accountability, true accountability which is saying, so what’s keeping you from doing this? That question helps you figure out, are you in column 1 or column 2? Depending on what the answer is, then we can help you move forward from column 1 or column 2.
It’s rare that we don’t know what to do. It’s usually that there are other things that are more interesting to do, or we don’t understand the ramifications of not doing them. We only know I’m going to keep using bookkeeping. We only know the tax deadline ramification. We don’t understand how much is at risk by not keeping track and knowing what our numbers are on a month-to-month basis.
In thinking of why business owners struggle to implement what they know because they know the what, but they don’t always know the how. They don’t know that first step to take in order to do this. I think that is probably the most profound statement ever because there are so many things that we think we know how to do because we know so much of the what, but when we sit down to do it, it’s like, “Where do I begin?” We start feeling like it’s circular.
You talked about perfectionism. Being afraid to do it wrong is one that gets us stuck between knowing what to do and doing it. Energy which we talked a lot about in our last episode but not having the energy to do it or not having the energy to think about how to do it. Back to item one and then you brought up a good point with no method of accountability. I like what you said about why didn’t this get done? That is not a helpful question.
What got in the way of it? What prevented it from happening? Then what that does is it opens up a conversation. There’s this other thing that is always emerging. We’ll say, “My kid’s school called, that’s why I didn’t get it done, and I only allocated this time,” and it’s like, “Your kid’s school is calling you four times a week.” Maybe this needs to be a task that we do when school isn’t in session. It could be that I slept in on day one. I got a phone call on day two. I did something else. It seems like you might be using anything to get in the way of doing this thing. Not speaking from experience.
We have never experienced these things. You live under the bus with me too.
I do live under the bus with you, but the thing is, that’s an entirely different problem to solve than the first problem. The question was why didn’t you do the thing? We go because I suck. That’s why it’s a thing. I didn’t do it. I suck.
Our self-talk is so unhelpful when we are struggling to take action. The other one, which I didn’t mention and it’s a little bit of an offshoot with both of these and this comes from our friend Nick Peterson, but sometimes it’s because the data that I have been given doesn’t match the data that I live. What I mean by that is, all of the education that I have gotten says when I do A, B, and C, then D is going to happen and so I do A, B, and C, and D doesn’t happen and then I do A, B, and C, and D still doesn’t happen. Nick’s answer on that is always, “Your data, meaning your personal data, your A, B, C is better than my data, my example of A, B, and C, every single solitary time because it’s a different version of context matters.”
There are all sorts of additional elements that can never be dealt with in a lecture, in a class, in a book, that may be preventing D from happening, even though you are doing A, B, and C exactly as they said. Like I said, it’s a little bit of both 1 and 2 that we used here. Sometimes the reason we are not doing the next thing is because we are expecting D to happen, and it’s like, I can’t do E until D happens and it’s like, D’s never going to happen.
Manifestation Of The Implementation Gap In Sales
That brings us to the next thing that we should be talking about, which is that it would be helpful to share explicit examples of how this implementation gap shows up in different areas of business. For example, in sales, you need to make offers. In order to make offers, you need to have people to make offers too. Yet many times in sales, people don’t want to talk to people.
I had a friend who once said, “Everybody is the best salesperson that ever lived until it comes to having to pick up the phone and call someone or approach somebody about, do you want this thing or don’t you want this thing?” That’s one thing avoiding calls in sales or maybe even avoiding the follow-up because you don’t want to be told no. Where do you see it manifesting in sales?
All of those things where we have a preconceived notion about our relationship with some salesperson at some point in time, and we are concerned that we are going to be that horrible person, can look like all sorts of things. My favorite story, and when I fell in love with Matthew Kimberley, was when he was talking about being a sales consultant. He said the first thing I will ask is, how many people have you made an offer to? They would say no, and he’d say, “Go out and make 100 offers and call me when you’re done. That’ll be $1,000, please.”
Sometimes it is about the basics, but we often project our experience out into the rest of the world, which isn’t necessarily true. If your experience is with what we’ll call the classic slimy used car salesman, you are probably not selling a used car. You are probably not slimy. There are a whole lot of things that are very different about it, but you get your mindset around that and say, “If I do anything like ask for the sale, then I’m being that person.” It’s like, “No, you’re not.” Our own preconceived notions and our projection of those into the actions is often a big issue. If you are someone who always wants time to think, you are going to assume all of your clients want time too.
Not everybody buys the same. A lot of times, that next step we struggle with is because we have projected our own experience almost always a negative experience into the process. It’s not helpful. It’s not the piece that’s providing value but also, sometimes it’s not going far enough back in the chain, like you said, because it’s not just about making an offer it’s about having someone to make an offer to. Where can you find those people, and how do you get those people? That’s not an instant thing. Most people aren’t going to show up on your doorstep and say, “Do you have something I want to buy?” That’s not the way that it works.
It just doesn’t work that way.
That’s how the implementation gap shows up in sales. We should cover marketing, finance, and operations. Is there another area that you think we should cover?
Systems.
The Struggle Between Knowing And Doing In Marketing
I always think of systems as operations, but you will be in charge of showing us the difference. On the marketing side, the knowing versus doing. First of all, I’m going to say that not all of the marketing tactics people think they should do are things they should do but in terms of, I should write blog articles. This is something that I have struggled with in the past for my own business because I do so much writing for clients. I know how SEO works. I know that what I do now will show results on Google and in search traffic six months from now. If I want search traffic 6 months from now, I need to be publishing now and yet, because I know I’m not going to see the fruits of my labor for 6 months, it’s easy not to do it now,
because in my mind, 6 months from today is no different than 6 months from tomorrow but let’s be real. It’s like I’m going to tell myself that every day for six months, and now it’s going to be a year in advance.
The Importance Of Regular Bookkeeping In Finance
That’s one thing in marketing a lot of times we want immediate results. We know that it takes 90 to 120 days for anything we do on social media to develop a trend for us to truly know what’s working. That doesn’t mean that you can’t put up a post and sell $10,000. It happens all the time but it does not happen every single day for most people. We know it takes time, but we want to quit after five days because it’s like, “It’s not feeling good. Nobody cares. I don’t want to show up for it.” Also, people know that they need a clear message. People know that they need to be able to succinctly talk about what they do, and yet they don’t want to spend the time doing that because it doesn’t feel like there’s a point. Give us a finance example.
A finance example is the one I did before. “I’m going to put off my bookkeeping because the numbers are what the numbers are,” until I have to give them to somebody else. It’s fine, and often it’s, “I think I know what the numbers are,” and so people will say, “I have been doing my bookkeeping enough. I know that my expenses are generally $2,000 a month. I’m making up numbers.” It doesn’t matter if I get them done on time or not. That can be true, but it also can be that there are some unexpected expenses that, because you are not paying attention, you don’t realize that your card has been frauded that you are paying for things ongoing that you aren’t using. There are all sorts of bits there.
It’s easy to tell ourselves we know enough about this that we don’t need to do the steps. I like the numbers. I like doing it, but very few people pay as close attention to anything as they think they do. We all think that we have way more detailed knowledge than we have. Our brain is designed to solve problems, not hold knowledge, and because of that, it’s like, “I know how much.” If you ask me at any point in time, I can give you pretty good numbers, but part of it is because I look at my numbers, and they are actual numbers on a regular basis but even so, I’m still usually off some. I know I’m paying way closer attention than most people are like, by a lot.
We often believe we have far more detailed knowledge than we actually do. Our brain is designed to solve problems, not to store information. Share on XI think that we tell ourselves a story of it’s not that important, or doing it isn’t going to change anything. True with bookkeeping. Doing the bookkeeping won’t change the bookkeeping because the bookkeeping is historic. It’s already happened, but it can change your behavior going forward, and that’s the part that people miss.
Overcoming Hiring And Systemization Challenges
For an operations example, what comes to mind for me is, you know you need to hire help, but you are not doing it because it feels hard. It feels too big. You don’t know where to begin. You don’t want to write the job description. There are all these things that get in the way of you hiring the help that you desperately know you need. Do you have another example?
Hiring is a great example of it. The other example I will give, which is tied closely to operations, is systems. It’s the system’s piece of it. I don’t want to systematize this yet because I may want to make some changes. I’m not sure that it’s working exactly the way that I want. This is where the perfectionism piece will come in. We had an experience a while back, but I have to wait until I find the right tool to do the thing.
I know this is one of your favorite things that you talk about all the time. I’m not going to systematize things until I figure out, do I want to use Notion, Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp or fill in the blank? There are lots and lots of choices, and the tool is not the solution. The tool is just the tool. We decide that the reason we can’t do the thing is because we are not sure about the tool. Fundamentally, all of these are excuses, and one of the things that I have used for years and years is, every excuse is a good one. It is the nature of it being an excuse. Every excuse is a good one. It’s a good excuse, but it still doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, move the needle, or make you take action.
Every excuse sounds like a good one—that’s the nature of an excuse. But even a good excuse doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, move the needle, or prompt action. Share on XHow To Overcome Action Blocks In Business
To that point, how do we solve the problem, move the needle, take the action? What do you recommend for the reader who goes, “I do that?”
My answer is always the same answer, and I sound like a freaking broken record, but it’s accountability and it’s true accountability, where someone else who cares about you and your business but is not so wrapped up in the details of it can hold you accountable. It can be peer accountability, it can be paid accountability. There are all sorts of ways that you can be held accountable, but it’s where someone else that you will respect and will respond to.
That’s another piece of it. Accountability is two-way. If someone’s trying to hold you accountable and you are not responding, then that’s not accountability. You’ve got to both play in the game with pretty equal effort. It’s not necessarily equal, but pretty equal effort but accountability is where you can start moving the needle.
It can be someone on your team. There are times that I have had you hold me accountable, and I say, “I need you to hold me accountable, and part of your job is to say, so I see this didn’t happen. What’s holding you back?” Often in that process, it’s like, “I’m scared. I don’t want to do this. I don’t know what the next step is.” Any of those things. Then we are able to work together to figure out, “How do we get past this thing?” Whatever it is.
I heard that, but why? Why do I need somebody else? Why can’t I do this myself? I’m almost 50 years old.
I’m way older than that, and I still need to be held accountable because here’s the answer, If you could do it, you would have already done it.
Hate it when you are right. That sucks.
It’s the same for me. It’s not that I can’t do it, because that’s not true either. Sometimes it’s like, “I don’t know why I’m not doing this thing.” I have all the skills and knowledge. There is no logical reason for me to not do it, and it’s not even like I hate it or any of the rest of it but that accountability helps me process through why it is not happening and sometimes the answer is because you don’t need to do it.
It doesn’t need to be done. You don’t want to do it. I know I’m poking fun. It’s a little self-deprecating here, but whether conscious or unconscious, most of us think by this age, whatever age we are, we should have figured it out by now, and there’s something wrong with us. We are some failures if we can’t make ourselves do the thing.
Your advice is you need to invite somebody else to hold you accountable and again, could be a peer, could be a paid professional, doesn’t matter, because and I will add this, you did not say this. The problem is we could talk ourselves into anything. Like you said, if you could hold yourself accountable, you would have done the thing already and I will say to your point earlier about excuses, like I know how to convince myself of things.
We are good at it.
Anything else you think readers need to know on the topic before we close up?
No. I feel like the first is being aware that knowledge is not the same as action and understanding that knowledge in and of itself isn’t useful. It is the taking action of it, and that sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t. If there is a gap between the knowledge and the implementation, it is the question to ask yourself Why is that happening? Is it because I don’t know the steps? Is it because I don’t want to do the thing? Is it because it’s not appropriate for me to be doing it at all? It seemed like a good idea, but it doesn’t apply to who I am, where my business is, and all of the things and then understanding, given that, then what is the action I’m going to take? It doesn’t apply? That’s easy. Then stop thinking you are going to do it.
Easy peasy, done, but the other ones often do take some form of accountability. You need some help to be able to move forward and that’s okay. It’s part of the reason that we are a communal species because we do need help from one another. We do need support from one another, and that’s not a weakness. It’s not a problem. If you go deep, you’ll discover that almost all of the very most successful people have a strong support environment and accountability network in some form or fashion. They are not doing it alone.
That is our mic drop moment. We think everybody else has it figured out better than we do, and everybody else is doing it all by themselves, and here we are struggling and the truth is, very few successful people, if any, got there all alone. For most people, they got from there to here through support and accountability because those two things combined because that’s the other thing.
Support and accountability are not the same thing, and ideally, you find an accountability partner who understands how to support you without enabling you and that is why we have From Insight to Impact, which is our weekly accountability subscription, which can help you gain clarity on your business, one reflection at a time. Every Friday, you receive a thought-provoking question from Gwen, which is designed to help you examine a specific aspect of your business and when you respond, you get personal feedback to help you implement positive changes that create sustainable, consistent performance around your business. Head over to the website to learn more, and we will see you next time.
Mentioned in This Episode
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.
