The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney 8/10

The Real Problem with Execution

• Organizational change falls into two categories:
  • Stroke of the pen – strategies that can be executed just by ordering or authorizing them to be done (e.g. capital investment, expansion of staff).
  • Behavioral-change strategies – requires getting people to do something different (improve customer experience, high quality, faster responsiveness)
• Issues behind execution
  • Clarity of objective – people didn’t understand the goal that they were supposed to execute.
  • Lack of commitment to the goal
  • Accountability
  • Lack of trust, misaligned compensation systems, poor development processes, and poor decision making.
• The Whirlwind:  the real enemy of execution.  The whirlwind is the urgent activities that are necessary to sustain your business day-to-day.  Goals are the new activities that need to be completed, but usually lose in a battle with the whirlwind.

• Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important Goal (WIG): The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish
• Discipline 2: Act on Lead Measures: This is the discipline of leverage.  It’s based on the simple principle that all actions are not created equal.
• Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scorecard: People play differently when they’re keeping score.
• Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability: Unless we consistently hold each other accountable, the goal naturally disappears.

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important Goal (WIG):

Two WIG Traps:

• The greatest challenge you will face in narrowing your goals is simply that it requires you to say no to a lot of good ideas.
• Trying to turn everything in the whirlwind into a WIG.  Trying to significantly improve every measure in the whirlwind will consume all of your time and leave you with very little to show for it.

Identifying your WIGs

• Ask: “If every other area of our operation remained at its current level of performance, what is the one area where change would have the greatest impact?”
• WIG can be within the whirlwind or from outside of it:
  • Within the whirlwind: something so badly broken that it must be fixed like poor completion times, out of control costs, unsatisfactory customer service
  • Outside the whirlwind: choices about repositioning yourself strategically (launching a new product or service).

Focusing the Organization

• Rule #1: No team focuses on more than two Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) at the same time.
• Rule #2: The battles you choose must win the war.
  • ASK: What are the fewest number of battles necessary to win this war?
• Rule #3: Senior leaders can veto, but not dictate.
• Rule #4: All WIGs must have a finish line in the form of from X to Y by when.  (Start line, Finish line, Deadline)

Discipline 1: Creating a Wildly Important Goal

Step 1: Consider the possibilities.

• Brainstorm with peer leaders, especially if you are all focusing on the same organizational WIG
• Brainstorm with your team members or with a representative group.
• Brainstorm alone.  You will still be able to validate the WIG with the team when you develop lead measures
• Questions to ask:
  • Which one area of our team’s performance would we want to improve most (assuming everything else holds) in order to achieve the overall WIG of the organization?
  • What are the greatest strengths of the team that can be leveraged to ensure the overall WIG is achieved? (This question will generate ideas in areas in which your team is already succeeding, but where they can also take their performance to an even higher level)
  • What are the areas where the team’s poor performance most needs to be improved to ensure the overall WIG is achieved? (This question will generate ideas around performance gaps that, if not improved, actually represent a threat to achieving the overall WIG)

Step 2: Rank by greatest impact to the overall organization WIG

Step 3: Test Top Ideas

• Is the team WIG aligned to the overall WIG?
• Is it measurable?
• Who owns the results, your team or some other team? Does the team have at least 80% ownership of the result? Does your team own 80% of the WIG’s result?
• Who owns the game – the leader or the team?

Step 4: Define the WIG

• Begin with a simple verb.
• Define the lag measure (from X to Y by when)
• Keep it simple.
• Focus on what, not how.

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

• While a lag measure tells you if you’ve achieved the goal, a lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve the goal.  While a lag measure is hard to do anything about, a lead measure is virtually within your control.
• Lead measure is predictive, meaning that if the lead measure changes, you can predict the lag measure will also change. 
• A lead measure is also influenceable; it can be directly influenced by the team.
• The key principle behind lead measures is leverage.  Lead measures act like a lever, making it possible to move a giant rock. 
• To achieve a goal you’ve never done before, you must do things you’ve never done before.  Determine 80/20 activities.
• One of the most challenging aspects of lead measures is getting the data. Without data, you can’t drive performance on the lead measures. Without lead measures, you don’t have leverage.

Discipline 2: Creating Lead Measures

Step 1: Consider the possibilities

• What could we do that we’ve never done before?
• What strengths of this team can we use as leverage on the WIG?
• What weaknesses might keep us from achieving the WIG?

Step 2: Rank by impact with strongest leverage

Step 3: Test Top Ideas

• Is it predictive?
• Is it influenceable?
• Is it an ongoing process or a “once and down”?
• Is it a leader’s game or a team game?
• Can it be measured?
• Is it worth measuring?
  • If it takes more effort than its impact is worth, it’s not worth it.
  • If it can be completed in less than six weeks, it’s not a good lead measure.

 Step 4: Define the Lead Measures

• Are we tracking team or individual performance?
• Are we tracking the lead measure daily or weekly?
• What is the quantitative standard?
  • If you’ll be measuring an activity your team does today, it’s essential that the level of performance go up significantly beyond where it is today.
• What is the qualitative standard?
• Does it start with a simple verb?
• Is it simple?

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scorecard

• People disengage when they don’t know the score.  When they can see at a glance (in five seconds or less) whether or not they are winning, they become profoundly engaged.
• Nothing affects morale and engagement more powerfully than when a person feels he or she is winning.

Discipline 3: Creating a compelling scorecard.

Step 1: Choose a Theme

• Trend lines, speedometer, bar charts, Andon (stop light, happy/sad face).

Step 2: Design the Scoreboard

• Is it simple?
• Can the team see it easily?
• Does it contain both lead and lag measures?
• Can we tell at a glance if we’re winning?
  • Winning or losing requires you to know two things: where you are now and where you should be now. Show target vs. actual.

Step 3: Build the Scoreboard

Step 4: Keep it Updated

• Who is responsible for the scoreboard?
• When will it be posted?
• How often is it updated?

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

• What’s difficult and rare is the ability to achieve a critical goal while living in the midst of a raging whirlwind.
• Great teams operate with a high level of accountability.

The WIG Session Principles

• The WIG Session should be held on the same day and at the same time every week.
  • Must be never less often than weekly.
  • The whirlwind is never to be allowed into a WIG Session.
  • WIG session is 20-30 minutes and then hold a staff meeting right after, during which they can discuss whirlwind issues.
• To prepare for the meeting, every team member thinks about the same question: “What are the one or two most important things I can do this week to impact the lead measures?”
• As a leader ask each team member, “what can I do this week to clear the path for you?
  • You’ll likely be in two WIG sessions per week: one led by your boss and one that you lead with your team.
• Each commitment must meet two standards:
  • The commitment must represent a specific deliverable.
  • The commitment must influence the lead measure.
• Actively schedule the time into the calendar to avoid having the whirlwind draw focus away from the WIG.
• The level of importance you place on a WIG session will directly determine the results of your team produces.

Discipline 4: Create a cadence of accountability

WIG Session Agenda

• Account: Report on last week’s commitments
• Review the scoreboard: Learn from success and failures.
• Plan: Clear the path and make new commitments

Rules – limit status reports to 4 minutes; people should cover objectives, status, issues, and recommendations; reviews should encourage joint problem solving rather than just reporting.

Common Pitfalls

• Competing whirlwind responsibilities. Don’t mistake whirlwind urgencies for WIG commitments.  Ask “How will fulfilling this commitment impact the scorecard?”
• Holding WIG Sessions with no specific outcomes.  Every WIG session needs to account specifically for prior commitments and result in clear commitments for the future.
• Repeating the same commitment more than two consecutive weeks.  You should always be looking for new and better ways to move the lead measures
• Accepting unfulfilled commitments.  If you’re casual about accountability for commitments as well as for results, the whirlwind will overwhelm the WIG.

When a team member fails to keep a commitment:

• Demonstrate respect – Susan: “Jeff, I want to know that the event last week was a huge success and without you, it could have been a disaster.  Everyone on this team understands how hard you worked and how important this client is to us.”
• Reinforce accountability – Susan: “Jeff, I also want you to know how important your contribution is to this team.  Without you, we can’t reach our goal.  This means that when we make a commitment, we have to find a way to fulfill it no matter what happens during the week.”
• Encourage performance – Susan: “Jeff, I know you want to help us follow through.  Can we count on you to catch up next week by fulfilling next week’s commitment as well as the one you were planning on making next week?”

Section 2: Installing 4DX with Your Team

5 Stages

Stage 1: Getting Clear

• Be a model of focus on the Wildly Important Goals
• Identify high-leverage lead measures.
• Create a compelling players scorecard.
• Schedule WIG sessions at least weekly and hold them.

Stage 2: Launch

• Recognize that a launch phase requires focus an energy, especially from the leader
• Remain focused and implement the 4DX process diligently.  You can trust the process.
• Identify your models (20%), potentials (60%), and resisters (20%). 

Stage 3: Adoption

• Focus first on adherence to the process, then on results.
• Make commitments and hold each other accountable in weekly WIG sessions.
• Track results each week on a visible scorecard.
• Make adjustments as needed.
• Invest in the potentials through additional training and mentoring.
• Answer straightforwardly any issues with resisters and clear the path for them if needed.

Stage 4: Optimization

• Encourage and recognize abundant creative ideas for moving the lead measures, even if some work better than others.
• Recognize excellent follow through and celebrate successes.
• Encourage team members to clear the path for each other and celebrate it when it happens.
• Recognize when the potentials start performing like models.

Stage 5: Habits

• Celebrate the accomplishment of the WIG.
• Move immediately on the new WIGs in order to formalize 4DX as your operating system.
• Emphasize that your new operating standard is sustained superior performance on lead measures.
• Help individual team members become high performers by tracking and moving the middle (potentials).

The 4 Disciplines Installation Process

• Step 1: Clarify the overall WIG.
• Step 2:  Design the team Wigs and lead measures.  This step usually requires two full days.
• Step 3: Leader certification. Usually requires a full day – leaders learn how to launch 4DX with their teams.
• Step 4: Team Launch. Leaders schedule and conduct a team launch meeting that last about two hours.  In the session, they also design the team scoreboard and assign responsibility for its completion
• Step 5: Execution with coaching.  Leaders typically need experienced guidance for about 3 months as they foster new behaviors and encounter unexpected challenges. 
• Step 6: Quarterly summits.  Leaders report to their senior leaders on progress and results in presence of their peers.

Best practices

• 1^st lead indicator of the 4DX: attendance and consistency of the WIG Sessions
• 2^nd lead indicator of the 4DX: how prepared people are in the WIG sessions: gauged by how long they last (short and concise)
• The specific aspect of the 4 Disciplines that made the biggest difference for my team: the weekly WIG sessions.
• Embed the language of the 4 Disciplines in your culture.  Ensure that your leaders are clearing the path.  Communicate openly and often to the front line.  Focus on raising the performance of your B-level leaders to that of your top performers. In large organizations, we have often found it most effective to work with 10 or at most 20 teams at a time.
• The 4 disciplines must be implemented by the leaders closest to the front lines.
• For support functions (Finance, HR, IT), choose WIGs after the line functions (sales, production, and operations) choose theirs.
• When to change a lead measure?
  • Is the lead measure moving the lag measure?  If so, be careful about changing something that’s working.
  • Is the lag measure moving enough?  If not, you might want to raise the standard for performance on the lead measure before changing it.
  • Is the scoreboard on the lead measure accurate?
  • Has the team achieved the lead measure for at least 12 consecutive weeks?