Executing decisions

　　执行决策

　　A lot of people spend a whole lot of time refining their productivity systems and to-do lists. But within the context of a team and a business, executing a plan as quickly as possible is an entirely different concept. Here’s how I’ve learned to execute with momentum.

　　很多人花很长的时间修改自己的效率系统和待办事项表。但是在一个团队和商业的环境下，以最快的速度执行计划是完全不同的概念。我想讲讲我时如何学习到动力十足地执行计划的。

　　Challenge the when

　　勤问完成时间

　　I’m always shocked by how many plans and action items come out of meetings without being assigned due dates. Even when dates are assigned, they’re often based on half-baked intuition about how long the task should take. Completion dates and times follow a tribal notion of the sun setting and rising, and too often “tomorrow” is the default answer.

　　It’s not that everything needs to be done NOW, but for items on your critical path, it’s always useful to challenge the due date. All it takes is asking the simplest question: “Why can’t this be done sooner?” Asking it methodically, reliably and habitually can have a profound impact on the speed of your organization.

　　我总是被会议中谈到的许多计划和行动没有上交日期所震惊。即使有的有日期，也经常是没有仔细考虑过这项任务到底需要多长时间的。完成日期通常和日出日落有关，惯性的回答一般都是“明天”。并不是说什么事都要现在做完，但是在关键路径上的事务，提前完成日期通常都是好的。只需问一个最简单的问题就好：“这个为什么不能早点做完?”提问要有理、有序并且要惯于这样提问，这会对你的组织的运转速度有深远的影响。

　　Today is better than tomorrow, right now is better than six hours from now.

　　今天比明天好，现在比六个小时后好。

　　This is definitely a tactic that starts with individual employees first—ideally those in senior positions who can influence others’ behavior. As a leader, you want them to make “things I like to do” become “things we like to do.” This is how ideas get ingrained. I’ve seen too many people never question when something will be delivered and assume it will happen immediately. This rarely happens. I’ve also seen ideas float into the ether because they were never anchored in time.

　　这是一个从员工个体先开始后的技巧——最好是那些高职位的员工，他们可以影响其他人的行为。作为领袖，你想从“我想做的事情”变成“大家想做的事情。” 思想就是这样扎根的。我见过太多的人从来不质疑事情什么时候能做完，他们总是假设会马上做完。事实上从来不是这样。我也见过一些主意最后一场空，因为从来没人确定过时间范围。

　　You don’t have to be militant about it, just consistently respond that today is better than tomorrow, that right now is better than six hours from now.

　　你不需要像军官一样实施这一点，只需经常回应“今天比明天好，现在比六个小时后好。”

　　There’s a funny story about my old pal Sabih Khan, who worked in operations at Apple when I was a product manager there. In 2008, he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production snafu in China. Tim said, “This is bad. Someone ought to get over there.” Thirty minutes went by and the conversation moved to other topics. Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked, ‘Why are you still here?’ Sabih left the meeting immediately, drove directly to San Francisco Airport, got on the next flight to China without even a change of clothes. But you can bet that problem was resolved fast.

　　我有一个关于老朋友Sabih Khan的故事，他曾经为苹果的运营部工作过，我曾是哪里的产品经理。2008年，他和Tim Cook见面谈论中国区出现的生产混乱的局面。Tim说：“这不行。需要有人马上赶到那边去。”三十分钟过去了，他们把话题转移到了别的地方。突然Tim向后看了一眼Sabih，说：“你怎么还在这儿?”Sabih立刻离开了会场，连衣服都没换就开车直往旧金山飞机场，坐下一班航班飞往中国。但是你可以想象问题肯定解决地很迅速。

　　The candle is always burning. You need leadership to feel and infuse every discussion with that kind of urgency.

　　蜡烛总是在燃烧。你需要领导力才能让每个对话都充满了那种紧急感。

　　Recognize and remove dependencies

　　认识到依赖关系，并移除它

　　Mission critical items should be absolutely gang tackled by your team.

　　关键任务一定要让所有成员一起上手解决。

　　Just as important as assigning a deadline, you need to tease out any dependencies around an action item. This might be obvious, but mission critical items should be absolutely gang tackled by your team in order to accelerate all downstream activities. Things that can wait till later need to wait. Ultimately, you can’t have team members slow-rolling on non-vital tasks when they could be hacking away at the due date for something that is make or break.

　　如同设立一个完成期限一样重要，你需要将一项行动所牵扯的依赖关系移除掉。我要说得可能大家都知道，关键任务一定要让所有成员一起上手解决，以确保所有下游活动能够加速完成。能稍等再做的事情应该等一下再做。最基本的是，你不能让团队成员在不重要的任务上磨洋工，他们应该为一个生死攸关的任务撸起袖子大干。

　　A big part of this is making sure people aren’t waiting on one another to take next steps. The untrained mind has a weird way of defaulting to serial activities—i.e. I’ll do this after you do that after X, Y, Z happens. You want people working in parallel instead.

　　A lot of people assume dependencies where they don’t even exist.

　　这样做主要原因是要确保不会有人需要等上一个工作做完才能做之后的工作。没有经过训练的大脑会奇怪地自动安排几个连续性的任务——比如，满足了X, Y, Z条件后你才能做这个，你做完那个我才能做这个。你想让员工平行工作。很多人在即使一些依赖关系不存在的时候也错误地认为存在。

　　How can you turn serial dependencies into parallel action? As a CEO, I insert myself at different points in a process to radically accelerate things. For example, if we’re coming up on an announcement and time is of the essence, I might jump in and just write the blog post myself. It’s not that my team couldn’t do it. I just know it would be faster since I’m the one who’s picky about the content anyway. As a leader, it’s your job to recognize the dependencies and non-dependencies, and take action depending on how critical the thing is and when it’s due.