Execution- Your key to Success

 

 Every year, you see so many new businesses starting. The founder of each business is sure he/she has a great idea. How many of these businesses make it to the next level? How many of them reach the heights they wanted to when they started the business? Perhaps, less than 5%. Why?

The answer is simple - They failed in executing their plan. You may have a great plan or idea but unless you know how to execute it, success will be hard to find.

“Ideas are yesterday, execution is today and excellence will see you into tomorrow.” Julian Hall

More often than not, people fail not because they lack knowledge or have a bad idea but because they don't give due attention to the execution. Execution is the main driver that always pushes you towards your goal. Before we go further in the article, I hope you are with me that execution is the key to success. If not, try to analyze yourself, why are people not successful even when the idea is great?

“Ideation without execution is a delusion.” Robin Sharma

In any journey, the prime factor which will lead you to success is - your DRIVING FORCE of doing something. Why do you want to execute your plan/idea? You want to be a successful trader - but why? Unless you have a strong desire to achieve your goal, you will see after some time your interest level will drop in what you are doing, or if you fail in the initial phase, you will give up. But if you have a strong desire, you will make sure you are well prepared to execute your plans and you will do anything to achieve it. When I was in school, I only wanted to study those subjects which I liked, however, as you know to get a good ranking in the class, you have to get good marks in all the subjects. So I worked hard in all the subjects. Why? What was my driving force? I wanted to have a high profile professional career after school.

“Average people have great ideas. Legends have great execution.” Anonymous

If you are with me so far, you know your desire to excel in something is important. What's next?

Let us say, you have a strong desire for success. Will that guarantee success? Certainly not. If you are a laborer and your job is loading and unloading bricks, you may find success just with a strong desire to excel. Here we are talking about achieving things which requires skills. Not everyone is a born trader or a businessman, those who are successful today, it is only because they have acquired the right knowledge and skills and then worked hard in achieving their goals – through execution.

Idea, strong desire and required skills - you have all of this. Now what? 

Will you reach your goal? You can start tasting success with the above three, but to reach your ultimate goal - you need something more - Continuous improvement through monitoring of your progress. The road to success is long, you need to have checkpoints at regular intervals to see you are on the right path. You can achieve it by monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you are a trader, by just looking at live trade's MTM or reading Profit & Loss statements won't improve your performance. There is no hard and fast rule in trading, different traders can have different styles of trading and earning goals. You have to be clear about your style and earning goals. You should not be changing it very frequently.

As a trader, you can have KPIs as below:

• Number of trades per week or month
• Number of gainers Vs losers
• The average profit in winning trades
• The average loss in losing trades

Just like any business cannot survive if it is not growing, you as a trader cannot excel unless you grow. How can you grow? You can do so by attending seminars, training programs and reading books. If you want to know more about the growing part, I will write a separate article on it.

Just like you monitor the progress of the company every quarter from the numbers on its balance sheet, you should have numbers of your performance covering every aspect – number of trades, success ratio, number of trades lost because of emotional factors, top trades of the quarter (maximum profit), etc. Once you have these numbers in front of you, you don’t need an expert to tell you where you are going wrong in execution. You will automatically know what changes you have to make in your execution strategy to improve.

Just ensure, you are improving quarter by quarter and in a few years (yes, success does not come overnight) you will become a master of trading. Having said that, it does not mean, all the efforts you have been making to be a successful trader will not be required. It will still be required, but now it will come naturally to you and perhaps your efforts will reduce. Success is not a destination but a journey.

I am confident this article will motivate you to take the first step and the right execution will help you to get what you deserve.

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Prem Sinha is a lifelong passionate learner and enthusiast of the Share market since 2003. He also guides other traders in their trading journey since 2010 through quality training programs. Through live trading clubs, he mentors traders to reduce losses, improve their capability and reduce their learning curve.

His major areas of expertise are Price action based Technical analysis, Options strategies based on Option Greeks, customized Option strategies, Option trades management and Option portfolio management. He & his team have also explored and adopted some scientific techniques to handle the psychological aspects of trading.

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