Delivery is turning talk into reality. Every promise we deliver builds trust, and every promise we miss erodes it. Credibility with others (employees, customers, investors, and partners) comes from showing that we do what we say, consistently.

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” - Pablo Picasso

4 steps towards a scalable delivery system

1. Get the MIT done

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Block 30 minutes or 1 hour in the calendar every day, to just do the MIT.

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First, complete, at minimum, one most important task (MIT) everyday. Block 30 minutes to 1 hour every morning in the calendar tool (Google Calendar/Apple Calendar). Then, every morning, make the MIT of the day in the task management tool (Asana/todoist/Notion/Clickup/Monday/Basecamp), tag it as the “MIT of the day” to complete during the MIT slot.

Earlier in the day is better, with less external factors to miss it. Remove any distractions (e.g. phone off, no other tabs open) during the MIT time block to fully focus on completing the MIT. Do not start any other task until the MIT is completed. This way, even without completing any other task, we can end the day knowing that we have at least made some progress with the MIT.

Only one action should be the MIT. In reality, only a few things drive real outcome. In startups, the MIT should always be about building a great product, selling it, and scaling the organization. Everything else (e.g. MOUs, pitch competitions, awards, increasing # of followers) is a nice to have. Nice-to-haves can sometimes help, but will not directly achieve real outcome. Make sure to the MIT is only a necessary action (not nice-to-have) to deliver real outcome.

After completing the MIT, have a set of rules to continuously execute other tasks well. Some best practices are:

• 2-minute rule: Do it immediately, if it takes <2mins. Put it in task management tool if >2mins.
• Systemist approach: Use one task management tool for everything, from work to personal to everything else. All tasks should be placed here, as soon as they arise.
• Prioritize: Divide by what needs to be done today, this week and someday. Be ruthless in killing nice-to-have tasks, so that we can complete the MITs.
• Kill or split: Remove or split the task into smaller sub-tasks, if postponed twice. Either not important to do, or procrastinating because it seems too big.

With the daily iteration cycle of setting, doing, completing and reviewing MIT, we can get the habit of doing what we say we’ll do, while receiving the daily dose of satisfaction from completing the MIT.

2. Make great promises

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Set a clear, ambitious yet achievable goal, and record it

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Set a clear, ambitious yet achievable goal for a specific time period. Set a Quarterly OKR (Objective and Key Results) or **a North Star metric (**an indicator of the company’s long-term success) and write it down (Notion/Docs). Without setting any single important goal, it is easy to drift away. Setting objectives is not about just achieving them. It is about making sure that we don’t get lost and focus on moving toward that direction. To be accountable to ourselves.

For Quarterly OKRs, set 1 Company-Level Objective (where we are heading towards) and 2-3 Key Results (once reached, anyone can know that we achieved the Objective) for the upcoming quarter. Set OKRs every quarter with the executives for the company-level, then for each major department.