Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution
The success of an organization is directly determined by how well people in that organization execute on their high-stakes projects, programs, and initiatives. And yet execution trends are anything but promising:
- According to the Chaos Report published by the Standish Group, estimated project failure rates range from 64–91 percent.
- A recent survey by VitalSmarts revealed that 83 percent of employees say they are working on projects, programs and initiatives they believe will fail.
- Research shows that fewer than one in three critical initiatives will achieve its intended goals and almost half are deemed outright failures.
New research by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group shows that these failures are largely predictable—and, therefore, preventable.
In the groundbreaking study, Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution, researchers found that project failures are almost always preceded by conversation failures. Specifically, they found that success and failure can be predicted with 85 percent accuracy based on how well participants—from the executive suites to cross-functional teams—perform in five crucial conversations.
More importantly, these five conversations are not just a predictor of but an inoculation against shockingly high rates of failure to execute on ambitious and otherwise right-headed plans. When leaders are skilled at holding these five conversations, the odds of success increase 50-80 percent.