Execution is killer.
A Harvard-trained career expert has revealed the most “underrated” quality that employers are looking for from new hires.
Suzy Welch, a Harvard grad who currently serves as a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, revealed in a column for CNBC that the “most underrated” skill of highly successful people is execution.
Recently, one of Welch’s students came to her complaining about the results of a 360 feedback report from her former bosses and coworkers prior to getting her MBA, saying that they were “atrocious” — but Welch disagreed.
“Stop beating yourself up!” she said to the student. “Any CEO would kill for someone like you. I’m serious. Look at this feedback! It says you’re conscientious, reliable, decisive…”
“But I want to be a leader,” the student protested. “This just says I’m an operator.”
Welch immediately clocked the issue, one that she said is common with her students in their 20s and 30s.
Rather than recognizing the student’s skills and ideas, like the ability to recognize trends or her detailed data analysis, or saying that she inspired the team, the feedback praised the student’s ability to execute — “to get stuff done. Fast. Early. Perfectly. Always.”
These highly ambitious students who aspire to have impressive careers lack something that Welch learned with decades of experience.
“Execution is your career’s killer app,” Welch declared.
“Time and time again, I’ve been in the room where it happens — where promotion decisions get made, and sadly, sometimes where ‘departure’ decisions happen as well,” she explained. “And time and time again, I’ve seen a person’s ability to execute be the deciding factor.”
A person’s skills to anticipate any roadblocks and fix them, to be dependable around deadlines and tasks, to get things done both quicker and at a higher quality, and their ability to take accountability for actions and outcomes are all qualities that are essential to a CEO, Welch explained.
“Their tendency to walk a whole lot more than talk,” she said.
“It’s funny. When people are early in their careers, they almost always understand that integrity is essential in business,” Welch noticed. “It takes a few years to come to see that great execution is a form of integrity, too.”
Welch believes that “every boss in the world” wants execution — small stuff included, such as getting to work early and going to meetings prepared.
But what they really want to see, she said, is when employees say, “I’ve got this,” and then prove that they do.
It is true that sometimes the execution comes more naturally to some people while others have to put in more effort.
But while good ideas and people skills do matter in the workplace, “the cold hard truth of business is that the biggest, most unsung career amplifier and accelerator is the quality of your execution.”
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