4DX - The Four Disciplines of Execution

Buckle up.. not for the latest cinema experience.. but on how to balance getting caught up in your own whirlwind of the day job with focusing on your important goals.. the 4DX system has been implemented in companies such as Marriott Hotels where 4DX was "a powerful tool for staying focused on what is most important to us: Our Guests' Experience... to create breakthrough results!

Execution typically fails due to a lack of clarity, commitment and accountability. But above all, it fails because we get so caught up in the whirlwind of urgent daily work that we’re distracted from our most vital goals.

To execute successfully, you must concurrently address the urgent tasks of your whirlwind?and?the important new activities that’ll deliver your most vital goals, the wildly important goal (WIG) for you, or even two or three WIGs.?

Every time we switch tasks, every time we pause to answer a new notification or get an alert from a different app on our phone, we're being interrupted, and with that interruption, we pay a price: something called a "switch cost."

We're also shooting ourselves up with a dose of the stress hormone cortisol. The switching puts our thoughtful, reasoning prefrontal cortex to sleep, and kicks up dopamine, our brain's addiction chemical.

Steve Jobs, the founder of 苹果 , was the perfect example of someone who incorporated this principle. He was famous for his ability to narrow down his focus to just a few "wildly important" products, which led to the company's success.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution for Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals? as articulated famously by Chris McChesney , Jim Huling and Sean Covey are:

1. Focus on the wildly important
2. Act on lead measures
3. Keep a compelling scorecard
4. Create a cadence of accountability

We can’t ignore our whirlwind, yet we must avoid being lost in it. The key is to spend 80% of your time managing the whirlwind, but devote 20% of your time to your WIG for your biggest breakthroughs. Once you’ve achieved a WIG, it comes part of your whirlwind.

Senior leaders should define the top-level WIG to guide the lower-levels) then allow each level to define and commit to their own WIGs. This encourages innovation but also an attachment and meaning to everyone for what they can effect.

All outcomes can be measured either as lead or lag measures.?Lag Measures (such as weight loss) show your performance based on what happened in the past, while Lead Measures?(such as diet and exercise) show the high-impact things that you must do?now?to reach your goal.

This discipline is about deliberately focusing on the lead measures (or high-impact activities) that will drive your lag measures.

Create meaningful, BIG, visible, continually updated scoreboard, which tells whether the team is on target or not, as key to personal and team engagement towards the WIGs.

Finally, holding frequent meetings which focus on the WIGs development, highlighting individuals, and team, achievements, tasks and responsibilities and review and report.

It's interesting to see how BNI (Business Networking International) in seeking to apply 4DX has to focus on defining the correct Wildly Important Goal(s) and then has mechanisms through the core values such as accountability to track the relevant lead measures, recognition through a leaderboard/traffic lights system and then a cadence of accountability through weekly tracking and meetings.