Execution, execution, execution.

Those are the keys to making the most of the encore opportunity, says George Weathersby, chief executive of Genesys Solutions LLC, a consulting firm that helps organizations deliver on their strategic goals through a relentless focus on execution.

Execution is the follow-through that allows ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary results. Coming up with a good strategy, he says, can be done by a relatively few people. Execution, on the other hand, requires the coordinated action of hundreds or thousands of people, sometimes all over the world.

Weathersby, who has led for-profit, non-profit and public sector organizations, offers this example:

“Let’s say we had 100 talented recently retired folks who are willing to give two hours or week at a high school or grade school,” he says. “You’d say, ‘Wonderful idea. Let’s invite them all to go in and find a good use of their time.’ At the end of the year we’d look back and have 75 stories of wonderful activity. There would be five or 10 who were such extraordinary people that they had made great things happen. We would label that an overwhelming success.”

He continues: “An alternative would to be say, let’s understand what this school is trying to achieve. That may be improved academic performance or the fact that so many people drop out of school. Here are the two or three key initiatives to focus on. Here are the behaviors that are essential to that. Now, we align those 100 people and say, “Let me help you understand the two or three initiatives of this school. Here’s the role that we want you to play in fulfilling those initiatives and that you with your deep experience and knowledge can play better than most anyone else.”

“Here’s how important this is: We’re going to meet with you once a month and with the principal and we want to learn from you. Every week you can go online to the special website and you can see the people you’re working with and how they’re doing. And then we’re going to recognize the kids that meet or exceed the expectations by the end of the year. We’re going to ask you to join these students at a banquet where we can recognize you for your contribution and the kids for theirs.”

Which one of those two systems would you bet on if you had to lay money? Weathersby asks.

“With that process I can take 100 volunteers who are former CEO’s or I can take a 100 volunteers who are retired teachers and I can give you outstanding results,” he says. “I’m not counting on having five people who are so extraordinary that they’re going to make an overwhelming contribution anywhere they go.”

Such extraordinary results are crucial to the success of the encore movement, as millions of people deploy their talent and experience to tackle social challenges. According to Weathersby, progress against those challenges will require a focus not only on strategy, but execution.

The encore career is a familiar concept to Weathersby, who has served as the CEO of a publishing company, an aerospace service firm, a venture capital firm and the American Management Association, in addition to being a White House Fellow, a special assistant for counterterrorism to the U.S. Secretary of State and a faculty member at Harvard and UC Berkeley.

In this Encore Leadership interview, Weathersby explains the elements of execution that are applicable to for-profit and non-profit organizations, and to individuals as well.