(CHRIS McCHESNEY, SEAN COVEY, JIM HULING/

Free Press/April 2012/352 Pages/$28.00)

Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals

THE FOUR DISCIPLINES
OF EXECUTION

- 2 -
THE FOUR DISCIPLINES OF EXECUTION
Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals


MAIN IDEA


Almost everyone agrees developing a strategy is easy but that executing that strategy is
much harder, especially if that requires a significant change in human behavior.
Strategy can be changed with the stroke of a pen but executing on a strategy and
achieving an important goal often requires that you do new and different things and
these new and different things usually come up against the whirlwind of activities
which make up a normal working day. Most people are just trying to survive battling that
whirlwind and dont have the time or energy to do something new.

With that in mind, the key to increasing execution is not to manage your whirlwind. It is
instead to execute your most critical strategy in the midst of that whirlwind.There are
four steps involved: The 4 Disciplines of Execution:



Although the disciplines may seem simple at first glance, they are not simplistic. They

- 3 -
will profoundly change the way you approach your goals. We believe they represent a
major breakthrough in how to move teams and organizations forward. 4DX is an
operating system for achieving the goals you must achieve.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling


About of Author
CHRIS McCHESNEY is Global Practice Leader of Execution for FranklinCovey. He is a
keynote speaker, consultant and advisor on strategy execution. He has consulted with a
broad range of organizations as they have tried to increase their execution
performance.

SEAN COVEY is Vice President of Global Solutions and Partnerships for FranklinCovey.
He oversees operations in 141 different countries and also serves as Chief product
Architect for FranklinCovey. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Harvard
Business School.

JIM HULING is Managing Consultant for FranklinCoveys 4 Disciplines of Execution. He
teaches the system and helps organizations implement it. He is a graduate of the
University of Alabama and Birmingham-Southern College.

The Web site for this book is at www.team.my4dx.com




















- 4 -


Execution always starts and ends with focus. Focusing your finest efforts on one or two
important goals will be more productive than giving a mediocre effort to dozens of goals.
In fact, it has been found this kind of dynamic exists in most organizations:



When it comes to setting goals, the law of diminishing returns always applies no matter
how inconvenient it may be. Therefore, one of the keys to achieving more is to change
your conventional thinking into something more aligned with a 4DX principle:



In any organization, the leaders challenge is to withstand the pressure to expand rather
than narrow the goals. Leaders are often aware of dozens of areas which need
improvement and face intensive external pressures to go after more and more goals.
The job of the leader is to say no to all those well intentioned invitations and instead
keep everyone focused on the one or at most two wildly important goals which will
genuinely move the needle.


- 5 -


We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any
knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to
keep the amount of things we focus on very small In number so that we can put
enormous energy behind the ones we do choose. The table each of you is sitting at
today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, yet Apples revenue
last year was $40 billion.
Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the couragepleasantly,
smilingly, unapologeticallyto say no to other things. And the way you do that is by
having a bigger yes burning inside.
Stephen R. Covey, author

If you want a high-performance team, the first step is to create a high-focus environment.
You have to learn to be like Apple and say no to all the good ideas so you can focus on
one great idea. You also have to say no to trying to simultaneously improve those things
which makes up the whirlwind of your everyday activities. Instead, you have to focus like
a laser on your solitary WIG or at most two WIGs and invest all your time, energy and
resources into them. That will only happen if you choose your WIG correctly. To do that,
ask: If everything else stayed at their current level of performance, what is the one area
where change would have the greatest impact? Identify where small changes would
have extraordinarily large impacts and then convert that into your WIG. A good WIG is
one that, once achieved, fundamentally redefines and enhances your performance as
an organization.

So how do you narrow the focus of an organization? All too often, organizational goals
are lofty sounding but imprecise at an operational level. People wonder what they are
supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it. To avoid that phenomena, there
are four rules for implementing Discipline 1 which should be applied:

1. Mandate that no team should focus on more than two WIGs at any time so
everyone had better get real about deciding whats wildly important and whats not.

2. Specify that the battles you choose must ultimately win the war for your organization
so youd better make certain achieving your teams WIG will ensure the success of
your overall organizations WIG. Otherwise, you may end up putting all your effort into
achieving your team WIG only to find it doesnt move your organization forward.

3. Its a good idea to have an understanding that senior leaders can veto but not dictate
when it comes to the WIG that is, WIGs dont work if the top leaders of the
organization decree them and then hand them down from on high to the teams below.
WIGs really need to be set by the people at the coal face based on their local
knowledge and then cascade upwards. You want the broad strategy to be defined by
individualized WIGs at every level. Leaders should provide clarity and then allow
teams to choose their own team WIGs. Obviously doing this will increase buy-in by
the rank-and-file people.

4. All WIGs must have a finish line in the form of: From X to Y by When they must be

- 6 -
specific. A good WIG would be: Increase annual revenues for new products from 15
percent to 21 percent by December 31st. Specifying where you are now, where you
want to be and by when sounds obvious but very few business targets have this degree
of clarity. There must be a measure which will enable everyone to know whether or not
a WIG has been achieved. You can also base yourWIG on a project.

Discipline 1 requires you to translate your strategy from concepts to targets, from a
vague strategic intent to a set of specific finish lines. The four rules for implementing
Discipline 1 give an entire organization a framework for doing this successfully.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

To build robust WIGs for an organization, the process is as follows:



Note that setting a WIG is not about setting goals that are easy to reach. A good WIG
absolutely must challenge your team to perform at their best. That is, it must be both
worthy and winnable.


- 7 -




Some ideas to keep in mind when setting your WIG:
Be prepared to spend whatever time it takes to get this right. Selecting the right WIG is
absolutely vital. Without doing this, your best intentions will get drowned out by
pressing day-to-day activities.

Dont be surprised if the WIG you end up with is completely different from the one you
thought youd set. This is normal when the stakes are high.

- 8 -
Work on the basis of the more options you consider, the higher the quality of the WIG
you end up with.

At this stage, focus on what the WIG should be exclusively. Dont worry about the
how that will come later. Concentrate on getting the what correct first.

Dont set ambitious WIGs that nobody believes you can achieve as stretch goals. That
type of gamesmanship undermines the 4DXapproach. Set a WIG which challenges
your team to rise to their highest level of performance but not beyond it.

85 percent of working adults cannot tell you their organizations most important goals.
Among the many reasons for this: Most organizational goals are vague, complex, and
pretentious. Many teams define a clear goal but then complicate it by adding a lengthy
description of how the goal will be achieved.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

With projects, its far better to establish a lag measure that relates to the business
outcome the project is designed to meet. As legendary Harvard marketing professor
Theodore Levitt put it, People dont want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a
quarter-inch hole.
You might establish a more precise lag measure by adding measures like
Meeting 100 percent of the specified functions
Providing full integration with a software package.
Including full functionality for the iPhone.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

When you think about it, the principle of focusing on the vital few goals is common
sense; its just not common practice. As Steve Jobs often said, Im as proud of what we
dont do as I am of what we do. Discipline 1 is about defining that greater goal, and it is
a discipline.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling





- 9 -
Lead measures are the measures of those activities which are most directly connected
to your WIGs. Discipline 2 in execution is to apply disproportionate energy to those
activities which will drive your lead measures so you leverage your time, effort and
resources.

Most people are familiar with scorecards but the conventional thinking has generally
been only leaders who can see the big picture use these. Often, the scorecard wi l l be
rather large and daunting spreadsheets with thousands of numbers that are difficult to
understand. Discipline 2 is all about coming up with simple daily or weekly measures
which, if achieved, will lead to the realization of your WIGs.



Scorecards are lag measures because they record how you have performed after the
event. Lead measures are predictive they measure something which you can do now
to influence your result in the future. They are also actionable and consist of something
you can influence by acting differently rather than a facet which is beyond your control.
A good lead measure should tell everyone: Heres where we are now and heres where
we need to be so lets get to work and make it happen.

In other words, a lead measure tells everyone whether youre winning or losing at a
glance. Good lead measures will have two traits:

1. Lead measures must be predictive
Make certain your lead measure connects directly to results. A farmer may know
rainfall leads to a good harvest but he or she cannot make it rain. Rainfall is predictive
but not influenceable. Measures like soil quality of fertilization rates would be better
lead measures for a farmer.

2. Lead measures must be influenceable
Most leaders obsess over lag measures but have no ability to move them. You must
have lead measures which can be actioned today or even in the next few minutes.
Otherwise, youre trying to drive the car by looking in the rear-view mirror.



Right about now you might be tempted to oversimplify what were saying. If youre
thinking something like So, all youre saying is that if you want to lose weight, you
should diet and exercise? Whats revolutionary about that? then youve missed the
point of Discipline 2. Theres a huge difference between merely understanding the
importance of diet and exercise and measuring how many calories youve eaten and

- 10 -
how many youve burned. Everyone knows you should diet and exercise, but the people
who actually measure how many calories theyve eaten and how many theyve burned
each day are the ones actually losing weight! In the end, its the data on lead measures
that makes the difference, that enables you to close the gap between what you know
your team should do and what they are actually doing. Without lead measures, you are
left to try to manage to the lag measures, an approach that seldom produces significant
results.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

So how do you choose the right lead measures? To achieve a goal youve never
achieved before, you must do things youve never done before. With this in mind, to
come up with great lead measures, you might:

Look at other organizations who have achieved the goal youre going after and figure
out what they do differently. Translate those behaviors back into actionable lead
measures people can track each day.

Analyze the barriers you face. Decide how to overcome them and select the 80/20
activities you will measure the 20 percent of your activities which will generate 80
percent of your WIG. Translate those activities into specific actions and then track
how youre doing in those areas.

Be prepared to look for simple measures which youve never before tracked. The lead
measures you need often appear to be insignificant but they are not. Keep digging
until you come up with a lead measure which is genuinely predictive of the outcome
youre going after.



When you really start figuring out what your true lead measures are, youll often find
there are two different types of lead measures which come to mind:

1. Small outcomes lead measures which focus on a weekly result but where a variety
of actions could be applied and it doesnt really matter which is used. You can give
everyone the latitude to choose whichever means they prefer to achieve the result.

2. Leveraged behaviors lead measures which track the specific behaviors you want
your team to perform each week. For this type of lead measure, you get everyone to
adopt new behaviors and then measure how well they have performed. Here the team
is accountable for performing the behavior rather than for the result produced.

Bother types of lead measures are equally valid applications of Discipline 2 and can
become powerful drivers of results.

The steps involved in arriving at high-leverage lead measures are:


- 11 -


Discipline 2 is all about providing team members which a small set of measurables
which will move the lag measure on your WIG. This is all about providing a clear,
concise and measurable strategy.






- 12 -


For many teams and individuals, Discipline 2 will be interesting. It will possibly be the
first time theyve ever had a clear WIG articulated with a defined finish line and some
concise lead measures. It will likely be the most executable plan theyve ever made. For
all that, however, you still need a way to make sure the new plan doesnt just get
swallowed up in the whirlwind of everyday activities and demands. Scoreboards are the
way to do this.

The difference in performance between a team that simply understands their lead and
lag measures as a concept, and a team that actually knows their score, is remarkable. If
the lead and lag measures are not captured on a visual scoreboard and updated
regularly, they will disappear into the distraction of the whirlwind. Simply put, people
disengage when they dont know the score. When they can see at a glance whether or
not they are winning they become profoundly engaged. In Discipline 3, the strategic bet
for your team, their lead and lag measures, are translated into a visible, compelling
scoreboard.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

The real key to making this happen is to let the team develop their own scoreboards.
This is vital. If you try and get everyone to use the complex scoreboards (or
spreadsheets) the senior management use, the big picture will get lost in the details. To
drive execution, you need to let the players themselves develop a scoreboard that has a
few simple graphs or numbers on it. In practical terms, it needs to function like the
scoreboard at a high school football game. At a glance, everyone needs to be able to
see heres where we are now and heres where we need to be. People always perform
better when they have a scoreboard.

A good players scoreboard:
Will be simple so everyone can react in real time rather than getting confused. The
players scoreboard of necessity will be simpler than a coachs scoreboard.

Must be highly visible to the team otherwise your WIG wont rise above the whirlwind.
Visibility also enhances accountability and personal involvement.

Will incorporate both lead and lag measures because this will bring your scoreboard

- 13 -
to life by providing context and relevancy.

Will have just a handful of measures which indicate instantly whether your team is
winning or losing the current battle.

Allows everyone to tell at a glance whether theyre winning it must give instant
feedback.

Will motivate people to win because people will watch it change moment by moment,
day by day and week by week as they try different things.

One of the most demoralizing aspects of life in the whirlwind is that you dont feel you
can win. If your team is operating exclusively in the whirlwind, theyre giving everything
they have just to sustain their day to day operation and survive. Theyre not playing to
win; theyre playing not to lose. And the result is a big difference in performance. But
with 4DX, not only do you create a game for your team, you create a winnable game.
And the secret to that game being winnable is the relationship between the lead and lag
measures that plays out on the scoreboard every day. In essence, you and your team
make a bet that you can move the lead measures and that those lead measures will
move the lag measure. When it starts to work, even people who have shown little
interest become very engaged as the entire team starts to see that they are winning,
often for the first time. Keep in mind that their engagement is not because the
organization is winning, or even that you as their leader are winning: its because they
are winning.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

One of the keys to success in developing a robust scoreboard is to involve everyone in
your team in creating something compelling. If they have a hand in choosing the design
and theme of the scoreboard, their ownership will increase.

The steps involved in developing a scoreboard are:



When it comes to effective scoreboards, there are all kinds of options. Some of the more
obvious:






- 14 -
Trend Lines


Speedometers


Bar Charts


Andon Charts



- 15 -
Stadium Scoreboards


The whole point is if you let your team design their own personalized scoreboards, they
wi l l be more meaningful. The more they feel like its their scoreboard, the more they will
take ownership of the results. Achieving the WIG will become a matter of personal pride
rather than an assignment handed down from on high. You can also inject some
elements of fun into the scoreboards to further enhance their appeal.



Sports scoreboards are simple and your WIG scoreboard must be the same. Make
certain your scoreboard contains both lead and lag measures and then put the
scoreboard in a high visibility position. If you place it where other competing teams can
see it as well, you might be able to slingshot on the back of a healthy sense of rivalry to
great results. You want people to be able to tell at a glance whether youre winning or
losing.

4DX enables you to set up a winnable game. Discipline 1 narrows your focus to a wildly
important goal and establishes a clear finish line. Discipline 2 creates lead measures
that give your team leverage to achieve the goal. This is what makes it a game: The
team is making a bet on their lead measures. But, without Discipline 3, without a
compelling players scoreboard, not only would the game be lost in the whirlwind, no
one would care.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

The 4 Disciplines work because they are based on principles, not practices. Practices
are situational, subjective, and always evolving. Principles are timeless and self-evident,
and they apply everywhere. They are natural laws, like gravity. Whether you understand
them or even agree with them doesnt matterthey still apply.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

Just as there are principles that govern human behavior, there are principles that
govern how teams get things done, or how they execute. We believe the principles of
execution have always been focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability. Are
there other principles at play when it comes to execution? Yes. But is there something
special about these four and their sequencing? Absolutely. Wedidnt invent them and
we freely acknowledge that understanding them has never been the problem. The
challenge for leaders has been finding a way to implement them, especially when the

- 16 -
whirlwind is raging.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling




The secret to Discipline 4, in addition to the repeated cadence, is that team members
create their own commitments. Its common to find teams where the members expect,
even want, simply to be told what to do. However, because they make their own
commitments, their ownership of them increases. Team members will always be more
committed to their own ideas than they will to orders from above. Even more important,
making commitments to their team members, rather than solely to the boss, shifts the
emphasis from professional to personal. Simply put, the commitments go beyond their
job performance to become promises to the team.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

This is the discipline where the rubber meets the road. Unless you have a frequently
recurring opportunity for people to report on how theyre doing, nothing will change. The
conventional approach is that accountability is top-down with the senior management
team specifying what the team will do. The 4DX approach is accountability is shared
everyone makes their own commitments and then everyone follows through and does
what they say they will. Personal commitments to move the scores forward in a
sustainable way is the aim here.

Discipline 4 suggests your team hold a weekly meeting for 20 to 30 minutes where you
report on progress towards your WIG. This session is held at the same time every week
and always follows the same agenda:






- 17 -
1. The meeting starts with an accounting where everyone reports on how they did in
meeting last weeks commitments. This creates continuity as assignments made dont
vanish in the mist never to be followed up on. You have everyone explain to the group
how they performed.

2. You then review the scoreboard with the mindset that you want to learn how to
move forward in the future. This requires that you analyze both your successes and
your failures. Figure out where youre ahead of the curve and where youre finding it
difficult to meet your targets.

3. At the end of the WIG session, everyone makes commitments for the following week
what you personally will do to move towards achieving your WIG. This is also where
you can collaborate to clear the path for what needs to happen and have everyone
make solid commitments.

If you make it a ground rule that every member of your team has to commit each week
to one or two specific actions which will impact on your lead measures and then report
back next week how they did, youll be amazed at how much clarity this creates. It will
help you keep focused even in spite of the whirlwind of everyday activities.

As people keep their weekly commitments, the lead measures will move in the right
direction and those lead measures will drive achievement of the WIG. Holding these
meetings every week without fail then creates a cadence which can drive the
organization forward. WIG sessions stop your WIGs from being swallowedup in the
whirlwind of everyday activities.

Note the accountability created in a WIG session is organizational rather than personal.
Instead of being held responsible for something you have no influence over, youre
asked whether or not youve followed through on the personal commitment you made a
week ago. Youre reporting not just to your boss but also to the other team members
and thats good.

The keys to successful weekly WIG sessions are:
Regularity hold your WIG sessions same time same place each week without fail.
Have others who will lead the meeting if youre going to be away.

Brevity good WIG sessions are 20- to 30-minutes at most. Be brisk and energetic.

Have your scoreboard handy its a vital part of the meeting. It shows definitively
whats working and whats not. Without a scoreboard, you cant have a WIG session.

Use this meeting to celebrate your successes find novel and meaningful ways to
congratulate those whove moved the ball forward.

Share learning get everyone up to speed with helpful ideas and best practices.

Set the whirlwind aside stay focused on commitments that move the scoreboard and
nothing else. Even forget about the normal pre-meeting small talk and banter. Be
brisk.

Look for ways to clear the path discuss how you can remove obstacles. Try and
leverage the strengths of your team.

- 18 -
Never let people make and fail to keep the same commitment for more than two
weeks in a row hold team members unconditionally accountable.

Discipline 4 requires real skill and a degree of precision in making and keeping
important commitments. Discipline 4 keeps your team in the gameevery week, as the
members connect their personal contributions to the most important priorities of the
organization. With this comes not only the awareness that they are winning on a key
goal, but that they have become a winning team. Which is the ultimate return on the
investment you make in 4DX.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

In total, the 4 Disciplines of Execution are an operating system for achieving the goals
you must achieve. So how can you roll it out to a large organization which consists of a
number of teams? The process involved in embedding 4DX into your organization is:

1. Clarify your organizations overall WIG specify your overall wildly important goal.
Get everyone working towards the same end.



2. Break that overall WIG down into team WIGs and lead measures again so everyone
is on the same page. Dont forget to make sure there is a clear line of sight from the
overall WIG to the lead measures and WIGs each team sets.



3. Train your leaders teach the team leaders who will then train their teams on the 4
Disciplines of Execution. At a minimum, team leaders will need to know and be skilled
at:

Designing WIG scoreboards with the involvement of their team members.
Using 4DX themselves.
How to run 4DX accountability sessions.
How to sell their teams on the basic principles behind the 4 Disciplines.
How to run a team launch meeting for their individual team WIGs.

4. Carry out your team launches two hour meetings where you overview 4DX and then
review your organizations overall WIG and each teams WIG. In this session, the
team will also develop a scoreboard of their own choice and clarify the lead and lag
measures involved.

- 19 -


5. Start providing ongoing coaching and holding your weekly WIG meetings so
everyone starts implementing the 4 Disciplines. Week by week, the team meetings
will help everyone get more adept at using the 4 Disciplines of Execution. Its likely it
will be three months or so before this becomes an automatic thing so stick with it.



6. Each quarter, hold an execution summit where team leaders can report to the
senior management team what progress has been made. Holding these every three
months allows enough time for lead measures to change and for the impacts of those
changes to become apparent. The more senior the managers who attend these
quarterly meetings, the greater the sense of urgency there will be to produce results.
Quarterly summits are also opportunities to recognize those who have made
outstanding contributions to implementing 4DX. They harness the power of
accountability and can become the driving force in implementing the 4 Disciplines of
Execution.

Rolling out 4DX is a process rather than a one-time event. Getting everyone pointing in
the same direction and using a common methodology will take time. Youre going to
face an uphill struggle if:

Your organizational WIG is not something that really matters. Bear in mind 4DX is a
means to an end rather than the end itself. With a compelling WIG, everyone will
have urgency and focus.
You dont have full commitment from your leaders.
You havent teach your team leaders how to implement 4DX effectively.

By contrast, the keys to successfully rolling out the 4 Disciplines throughout your
organization will be:

Embed the 4 Disciplines into your culture get everyone walking the talk. Be a great
personal example of strategy execution.

Make sure your leaders are clearing the path for others have them setting aside
nonessential WIGs so everyone can focus on the real deal.

Communicate let everyone hear your personal commitment to the 4 Disciplines.


- 20 -
Focus on helping your B-leaders raise their game by holding weekly WIG sessions
where you work with them and help them move forward. Get everyone onto a winning
team.

Hold the high ground keep reminding everyone the 4 Disciplines of Execution arent
about the numbers, its about the success of your people. Use this methodology to do
some great stuff.

The great management scientist Peter Drucker observed, Ive seen a great many
people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an
impressive record of achievement on trivial matters. But you dont want to be
magnificently trivial. You want to make a real difference. You want to make a high-value,
high-impact contribution. The 4 Disciplines of Execution can take you there.
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling




* * *
[ (NBS) ,
(Summary) . Book Review
,
. .]