CHAPTER 28 — Do what you set out to do

Execution is where good plans go to die. The gap between intent and action is usually not laziness; it is confusion, competing priorities, and weak follow-through.

Doing requires clear responsibilities, deadlines, and measures of completion. If no one owns the task, the machine will “own” it—and the machine will forget. If completion isn’t defined, progress becomes a feeling instead of a fact.

Disciplined reporting helps: what was supposed to happen, what happened, and why. That creates accountability without drama, and it feeds learning back into diagnosis and redesign.

Doing also means managing capacity. When too much is assigned, everything slows and quality drops. Better to do fewer things well, with standards protected, than to promise everything and deliver chaos.