By Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling
Book: The 4 Disciplines of Execution
How to Achieve Your Insanely Important Goals
You can make plans as much as you want, but how do you ensure they're carried out? Especially when it comes to behavioral change, the bottleneck is executing plans, not creating them.
In The Four Disciplines of Execution , the authors provide insights, principles, and practical tips on the art and skill of execution.
The book introduces "the whirlwind." A term to explain that our time is logically consumed by daily work. And that's not surprising, since most people have slightly more daily work than they have time for. Implementing changes naturally requires time, but where do you find it? Because daily work, as expressed by clients, colleagues, and others, explicitly and continuously demands our attention.
Leaders make little distinction between the whirlwind and improvement plans. Because both need to be implemented. The annoying thing is: the whirlwind and the improvement plans compete for people's time and attention. And usually, the winner is in practice…
The four disciplines are in a specific order:
The first principle is about focus: the more goals you set for yourself, the less likely you are to achieve them. If you focus on one or two goals, you'll probably achieve them. If you focus on 10-20 goals, you'll probably not achieve any. This is logical, but also difficult, because managers prefer more, not less. There are always more good ideas than there is time to implement them. Yet, we still find it difficult to say "no" to good ideas.
In this first step, you'll determine your Wildly Important Goal (WIG). That's not easy, because there are so many great goals. Go for it anyway.
The second principle is about leverage. Some actions are more effective than others, so focus on the behavior that has the most impact, and make sure you do it consistently.
Focus on measurable behavior (input) and not on results (output). Results are certainly incredibly important, and they're also the reason for change, but you only see results in hindsight. Managing results is like driving by your rearview mirror. If you want to increase customer satisfaction, and the annual results arrive in your inbox, that's a nerve-wracking moment. And at that point, there's nothing you can do to change that figure.
So, focus on input: A good question is: if we were to consistently do one thing differently in our daily behavior that would contribute to the result. Something we can influence, and that we expect to contribute to the result. What would that be? And then make that behavior measurable.
An example of the concept of steering on measurable behavior at one of our clients:
One of our clients wanted more follow-up work from their clients (output). On the input side, they chose to change the following behavior: upon completing each assignment, the consultant suggests a meeting in two months. A free hour of aftercare, so to speak. The consultants complied, although not everyone saw the benefit ("What am I supposed to talk about after two months? Is that client really interested in it?"). The effect, however, was that within a few follow-up appointments, these appointments led to a new client request. And consultants began to say they enjoyed these conversations.
People work differently when they're keeping score. A simple example we heard: a trainer drew lines on the whiteboard after each break. He didn't explain it and simply continued with the program. Until someone asked about the lines. The trainer explained that he kept track of how many people returned after the break at the appointed time. What do you think happened to the number of lines in the following training days? Exactly.
Would you like more information about this book, or to order it directly? We recommend Managementboek.nl.