Secrets of great execution often require experience and so if you are to hone your ability to execute or deliver, it can be wise to ask others who have actual experience. I have been told, by those who read it somewhere, that one secret of execution is the need to focus such that all else but mission critical tasks are excluded.

At the same time I have been made keenly aware, through personal pain, that integrity is essential to any business success. I have observed people focus down in such detail that in the name of being focused they ignore crucial opportunities and while winning many small skirmishes loose key battles and actually compromise the integrity of what they do.

Being a photographer I have always considered that to focus is good and beyond focus you can benefit from having a zoom lens. Zoom lenses are a huge convenience for the modern photographer because they allow you to look at the whole of a situation and then zoom into great detail and back out again and as you do so your understanding of the whole becomes more precise and with that a more precise understanding the integrity of the whole can be better grasped.

Spending time looking atintegrity I have found that while there are many definitions there is often confusion between having integrity and having a moral sense of what is right. Growing up with both Chinese and Australian culture and language it often puzzled me that core ethics from my Australian side and core ethics from my Chinese side had different weights. For instance loosing face in Australian society was often part of the ritual of getting to know someone whereas loosing face on the Chinese side was a moral hazard to be avoided at all costs.

When it came to business ethics and morality I learned the hard way that people have very different standards of what they consider moral and ethical and yet could still be productive. In encountering more modern philosophical thought I came across a different definition of integrity that all at once solved my concerns. It was suggested to me that to have integrity one needed to be in a state of integrity and that the best way to achieve that state was to honor your word. So say what you are going to do and then do what you said and if you cannot do what you said come clean about it and make up for it.

When I took on this fairly simple rule it made a very big difference in my life as I became much more productive, as my head space was not filled with concerns about half done things. Anything that was not complete in my life stood out now as a matter of integrity and was therefore dealt with as swiftly as possible. It also affected what I would commit to if I knew I could not do it I would not commit to doing it and if I committed to something and subsequently found myself unable to deliver I have communicated this early and taken steps to make it right.