ENCORE: How did you come to your focus on execution?

WEATHERSBY: After 25 years of being a CEO at various organizations and corporations, I realized that the value of strategy is only created when you can execute it. If you can’t get that good idea done in the field, it doesn’t make any difference how good it is. And while there was a lot of help on the strategy development side there was no help on the execution side. So I started studying the process of execution.

What is it that we need to understand to enable people to execute? The usual response is — you see this in the venture capital world, you see this in the boards of directors of for-profits and nonprofits – is, if we only have the right leader, she or he will get things done. The thought is that you have to have the extraordinary person to achieve even ordinary results. My view is that if you create the right understanding and system and process of execution then you can enable ordinary people to achieve consistently extraordinary results. That’s the real challenge of execution.

ENCORE: Was there a moment or an experience or a challenge that brought this home to you?

WEATHERSBY: We did some work for some hospitals, several hospitals. If you look at patient care, customer service or patient satisfaction, they all depend on the nurses and the orderlies and the nurses’ aides and the people when you check in, the people who are doing the billing and disbursements and all of that. It’s how all of those people treat you. It’s not how the doctor treats you. The doctor could have the best bedside manner for the three seconds they see you, but it’s the nurses in there every 20 minutes that makes the difference.

I was working with the president of a hospital. They had just created a new patient awareness/patient care/patient service initiative and they talked it through with the vice presidents. Everybody thought it was a great idea. The board had adopted it and they had just announced it.

I said, “You’ve got supervisors on every floor on every shift that deal with the nurses and the nurse’s aides and the people who sweep the floors and people who run the labs.” Have you talked to any of the supervisors?” This president looked at me just like deer in the headlights. She said, “No, I never thought of talking to them.” I said, “How do you think the people on the front line are ever going to know what you expect them to do?” Just because the vice president knows doesn’t mean that an orderly knows.

And she said, “I’m going to change what I do. You’re absolutely right. I’m executing from the top down and I can’t. I have to execute from the bottom up.”

That’s exactly right. You communicate from the top down but you execute form the bottom up.

ENCORE: You say that the elements of this are pretty much the same from organization to organization even if the particulars might change.

WEATHERSBY: Everybody thinks they’re unique. But when you really get down to it the problems of execution are common.

One is the simultaneity issue. You have to have a number of things understood at the same time and by the same people. That’s totally unlike what you need in strategy. You don’t have to have very many people understand strategy — a handful is fine. But if you’re going to understand execution you’ve got to have a lot of people understand it.

Second, they not only have to understand what it is you’re trying to do but they have to understand what their role is. What do you want them to do about it? Nobody has the job of executing patient satisfaction. They have the job of being an accounts receivable clerk, or being a receptionist. “Yes, but what’s my role in achieving better patient satisfaction? Somebody better tell me that or I don’t know. You don’t want me to guess.”

Third, what’s the importance that you give to this initiative versus all the others that you talk about? CEO’s spout off lots of initiatives – ‘We’re going to be the best at this and better at that.’ Somebody I met with recently said “We’ve narrowed down to only seventeen major issues this year.” I laughed and I said, “You won’t get any of them done. You know that.” There’s this sense that I’ve got to have a lot of initiatives. And I said, “No. You need two or three of them consistently, over time. Two or three or four years you can make it. You’ve got to have people believe you that you’re serious. They’ve seen them come and go.

In most organizations, when you announce a new initiative, the people who have been there the longest simply wait knowing this too will pass. CEOs come and go, vice presidents come and go. Initiatives come and go with great rapidity. Long-term staff stay around forever so just wait it out.

The fourth thing is the skills, the tools, the information, the knowledge that you need to excel in the role that we’ve asked you to play. Most CEOs at this point said we don’t do that at all. We hire and train people in jobs not in roles. We provide tools and resources around jobs and around functions and around accountabilities but not around getting key initiatives executed.

And fifth is recognition.

ENCORE: Can you clarify the distinction between role and jobs?

WEATHERSBY: My job might be as an accounts receivable clerk. I’ve got to talk to all the people who owe us money. As I talk to my patients in a hospital who owe us money do I have a role in patient satisfaction? You bet I do. So I call up a patient and they say, “Well, my insurance company hasn’t been giving me a clear answer in this.” Do I say, “That’s too bad. Send me money”? Or do I say, “Let me link you in with our insurance advocate who will make sure that you get all the money you’re due from your insurance company”? Which one is going to leave a more satisfied patient? But my job is not satisfying patients. My job is collecting money.

My role has got to be very clear. I’m a receptionist, so what’s my role in patient satisfaction? I don’t know. My job is to send you to the right place. Is it to greet you? Is it to ascertain that you’ve got a problem and know who to call to get help immediately? Is it to realize you’re afraid when you come to a hospital and speak to you in a way that will remove your fear? What’s my role if I’m a receptionist? Nobody has ever explained that to a receptionist.

You’re sweeping the halls. Okay, you’ve got to do that a lot in the hospitals, mopping the halls. Do you realize you’re in the halls more than most other people? And so you’ve got a patient looking lost, a patient’s family looking lost. As they’re walking down the hall do you ever stop and say, “Can I help you?” You know where everything is because you sweep every room. Never asked. It’s not my job.

ENCORE: How do you apply these principles in your own individual life? How do you execute in your own life?

WEATHERSBY: Well the five elements have to be right for each of us in our own life as well as in an organization or a team. If I’m planning to do something, even planning to contribute something, let’s say to be a volunteer for Boy Scouts or something: I’m going to say do I understand the mission? If I don’t understand the mission I may do what I want to do but I’m not doing something helpful. I know from experience if I don’t spend some energy deciphering what the mission is I’m not going to get it so I’ve got to know the mission.

Secondly do I know my role? For a lot of people at the age you’re talking about they know what their role used to be at work but they may not know what their role is in this environment. And that’s an important thing to differentiate.

Thirdly, how important is it to me and how important is it to the other partner? If it’s not equally important to both of us one of us is going to be disappointed. I need to be clear about that.

And then do I have the information, resources or skills that I need to excel at doing this? I don’t want to do something in just a half-baked way. I want to do it in a good way so what do I need to know to do that? Is it a communication skill? Is it how to encounter with a student? Is it understanding what the latest vocabulary is and means? What is it that I need to know?

And then finally how will I recognize success and how will the organization in which I’m contributing my time recognize success? If those two are different we’re going to not really be in harmony. I may not want to do everything that you’re recognizing as success and you may not want to do everything that I am, but I need to know that so I can say is that something I want to be part of?

So those are the things I would argue that either motivate or de-motivate a volunteer dramatically. I think they have to do a lot with retention. If I’m going to do this a second and third year it’s because I really got those five things right or you help me get them right. I’ve been on boards, I’ve been on capital campaigns, I’ve been on auction committees. When those things are aligned, when we’ve got those five things right among a team of us, magic happens. And when they’re not frustration happens.

ENCORE: So there really is a personal corollary to the five-step process.

WEATHERSBY: Yes, because the individual is the unit of action. It’s not companies that execute. Individuals in companies execute. So the execution model is an individual model.

It eventually gets to be like riding a bike or something. You don’t even think about it. You just say, what’s the pattern? What do I need to know? And you know what you need to know. You say, okay, let me discern from the conversation in a few minutes what these five key elements are and ask a question or two to clarify them and then go do it. And then if you’re trying to organize a conference and say I know what I want to accomplish here and I’ve got five people helping me in the conference, here’s what I get these five people aligned to. Because if they do we’re going to have great things happen and if they don’t it’s going to be frustrating.

ENCORE: How were you personally able to make transitions between so many fields, between subject areas, between roles?

I did consciously think of serial careers. I was a freshman when Kennedy became president and had lived out of the country for a number of years before being in college. So I had a very personal sense of how important America was and was to me and this question about asking not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country really struck home to me. I spent the first part of my career really in the public sector and I worried about education most of that time, foundations, healthcare — basically public sector issues. After eighteen years of that, I decided to go into the private sector work and I transitioned from being the head of the Commission for Higher Education to being President of Curtis Publishing.

I went through the corporate world and then the venture capital world and then I became the president of the American Management Association and for a four year period of time worried about how to kind of bring my education world and my corporate experiences together.

And then I had one of those discussions, if you could anything you wanted to do in life, what would it be? And I said well I don’t know but the characteristics of it I do know. I want to work with people I admire and respect. I want to work on important problems. I want to leverage intellectual property and technology and not labor. That’s a common theme of mine. And I want to have fun. I want it to be enjoyable. So those were the criteria I used to set up Genesys. And so I selected the people, the people I admire and respect greatly and do to this day.

ENCORE: Is there an encore after this?

WEATHERSBY: I think meaningful work life goes on for a very long time. I think of life as a portfolio and so in my portfolio Genesys has an ongoing place to it. I try to do a little writing so I’m building up that part of my portfolio. I serve on some boards. I’m kind of divided between new start-up companies where I can try to give some experience of wisdom on this and then some established boards where I can give some continuity to it. And then I’m looking at how to put back into society in some amount out of gratitude for all that I’ve received in it. I think I’ll always be rebalancing my portfolio but I don’t envision sort of eliminating it. I can’t imagine just staying home and reading a book all day. I love to be engaged with people and ideas. And I think there are a lot of people like me. I don’t think most of us want to stop.