The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals; Summary of the Book

Authors are ; Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling

Jim Stuart, " To achieve a goal you have never achieved before, you must start doing things you have never done before'

The real problem with execution is that important goals that require you to do new and different things often conflict with "whirlwind" of the day job, which are made up of urgencies that consume your time and energy.

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

If you are going to create significant results you will eventually have to execute a behavioral change strategy.

Rule 1# No team focuses on more than two teams at a time. Identify one or two goals at a time. Focusing on a WIG prevents you from spreading yourself too thin. Our brains are not built to multi-task. The reality is narrowing goals is associated with better results.

Rule 2# The battles you choose must win the war.

Rule 3# Senior leaders can veto, but not dictate on the goals set.

Rule 4# All WIGS must have a finish line in the form of X to Y by when.

As Steve Jobs often said ," I'm as proud of what we don't do as i am what we do"

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

A lead measure is the measure of all tasks that are directly related to achieving the defined goal. As a leader you have to identify tasks and the corresponding actions required for your team to reach the goal.

Lag measure-is an indicator of when you have achieved your goal.

Discipline 3: Keeping a compelling scoreboard

Characteristics of a Compelling Scoreboard.

1. It has to be simple.
2. It has to be visible to the team
3. It should show both the lead and the lag measures.
4. It has to tell you immediately if you are winning or losing.

Discipline 4: Creating a Cadence of Accountability

Relies upon consistent performance tracking. Weekly WIG sessions of about 20-30 mins meeting with a pre-arranged plan to re-focus on accountability. This meetings are designed to hold each team member accountable for their dedicated tasks, all with the aim of moving the lead measures.

5 Step Outline of How your WIG should look like:

1. Adopt consistency e. g holding sessions on the same day at the same time each week. Specify what you expect from the sessions and what you expect from the sessions and when you expect these things to happen. If people cannot attend then the session must still go ahead.
2. Limit the WIG discussions to only actions and results directly related to the scoreboard. Do not allow any distractions, and remain focused only on the task at hand. This will ensure that the sessions are fast, seamless and everyone walks away knowing exactly is expected of them.
3. Don't go over the maximum of 30 mins. You want your sessions to be fast and efficient.
4. Have a clear plan. Start with a brief report on commitments. Then review the scoreboard, identify successes and failures. finally, plan the new commitments and direction.
5. Have everyone prepared for the meeting.

Great book with practical solutions for both individual and organizations .I highly recommend that everyone reads this book.