This book provides a practical framework for implementing the organization's most important strategic goals consistently, despite the daily whirlwind of urgencies and distractions.
The authors highlight four disciplines or principles of action:
Discipline 1: Focus on the incredibly important
Identify and select one or at most two goals that are truly important and will have the greatest impact. Make them your top priority. Make it clear to everyone that this is the most important.
Determine key measures that indicate whether you are achieving those goals.
Maintain an intense focus on those goals while ignoring other distractions.
An inescapable truth is that the more you try to do, the less you will accomplish. People lose track of this and try to do more and more things every day. Execution starts with concentration. Therefore, the first step in executing is to figure out what exactly is most important to what you want to accomplish and then focus solely on that.
Discipline 2: Act on Key Metrics
Identify and track outcome measures and behaviors that lead to the achievement of key goals.
Frequently visualize and report progress on these critical metrics.
Regularly celebrate visible progress.
You want to create a tracking system that lets you know how you are doing and stay motivated in the process. Some actions will have more impact on achieving your tremendously important goals than others. In this step, you try to identify where you will get the most return on your investment and apply maximum effort there. Measures can be lagged (reported after the fact) or anticipatory (precursors to performance).
Lagged measures are important, but leading-edge measures give you the results that reflect lagged measures. While a lagged measure tells you whether you have achieved the objective, an advance measure tells you whether you are likely to achieve it. We call them lagged measures because by the time you get the data, the result has already occurred. A leading measure is predictive, meaning that if the leading measure can predict that the lagging measure will also change. A leading measure is also influenceable; it can be by equipment. Identify your best leading measures and turn them into your key leverage points.
Discipline 3: Maintain a compelling results dashboard
All team members are accountable for their weekly progress in a structured format.
Challenges are resolved openly without blame or excuses.
An accountability partner provides ongoing coaching.
This dashboard helps you visualize progress towards your goals, making sure everyone understands the scoreboard at all times, so they can know if they are winning or not. People switch off when they don't know the score. People always act differently when they know you are keeping score. To increase participation, make running a winnable game. Capture your progress on a scoreboard that everyone knows, everyone understands, and everyone follows religiously.
Questions to check understanding of the tracking board:
Is it simple? Think about how much data
Can it be easily seen? It needs to be visible to the team.
Does it show lead and lag measures? The measure is what can affect the team.
Can I tell at a glance if I am winning?
Discipline 4: Create an Accountability Cadence
Hold short (20 / 30 minute) operational meetings with a specific format (record commitments, review metrics, make plan for next week) at least 1 time a week.
The cadence helps teams stay focused and engaged in a frequently repeated cycle of being accountable for past results and planning forward.
Promote a tremendously important Goal mentality throughout the organization.
While the first three disciplines shape the game, Discipline 4 is where the execution really happens. The leader and the team must be accountable for important objectives to avoid getting sucked into the whirlwind of day-to-day activities. Team members must hold each other accountable on a regular and rhythmic basis, with a predictable cadence. Everyone must report on their performance and keep doing so over and over again before anything changes. You have to keep reporting how changes are occurring.
Lessons Learned
Less is more - maintain intense focus on 1-2 critical goals.
Constantly visualize and track progress using driving metrics.
Establish a structured and disciplined accountability cadence.
Celebrate small breakthroughs on a frequent basis to maintain motivation.
Change behaviors, not just promote strategies.
Unwavering leadership commitment is critical.
Most teams go through five stages of behavior change:
Stage 1: Gain clarity.
Stage 2: Launch.
Stage 3: Adoption.
Stage 4: Optimization. Encourage and recognize abundant creative ideas to move major goals.
Stage 5: Habits.
Conclusions
This proven system helps organizations simplify, focus efforts and consistently achieve their most important goals through execution discipline.
Bibliography
McChesney C. Covey S. Huling J. (2012). The 4 Disciplines of Execution : Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (Hardcover). Publisher Free Press; 1er edition.
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