The Focus Course

The 4 Disciplines of Execution has become our model for goal setting at Blanc Media. Not goal setting in general, but analyzing relevant data to select which points of improvement will have the greatest impact. After establishing your wildly important goals how will you accomplish them? What weekly and daily routines will you employ to achieve your goals. How will you know if you’re on track? How do you keep your goals from falling off track until the next yearly review? 4DX walks you through a clear process of finding the highest points of leverage within your weekly and monthly rhythms, and optimizing them for the most return. We would highly recommend getting your hands on this book and digging in.

• The inability of leaders to focus is a problem of epidemic proportions. (pg. 24)
• Human beings are genetically hardwired to do one thing at a time with excellence. (pg. 25)
• There will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute. (pg. 29)
• If every other area of our operation remained at its current level of performance, what is the one area where change would have the greatest impact? (pg. 32)
• All [Wildly Important Goals] must have a finish line in the form of from X to Y by when. Every WIG at every level must contain a clearly measurable result, as well as the date by which ithat result must be achieved. (pg. 37)
• Apply disproportionate energy to the activities that drive your lead measures. (pg. 44)
• While you can’t control how often your car breaks down on the road (a lag measure) you can certainly control how often your car receives routine maintenance (a lead measure). And, the more you act on the lead measure, the more likely you are to avoid that roadside breakdown. (pg. 45)
• Lead measures are different; they foretell the result. They have two primary characteristics. First, a lead measure is *predictive,* meaning that if the lead measure changes, you can predict that the lag measure also will change. Second, a lead measure is influenceable; it can be directly influenced by the team. That is, the team can make a lead measure happen without a significant dependence on another team. (pgs. 46-47)
• Understanding lead measures will be one of the most important insights you take from this book. (pg. 47)
• There’s a huge difference between merely *understanding* the importance of diet and exercise and measuring how many calories you’ve eaten and how many you’ve burned. Everyone knows you should diet and exercise, but the people who actually measure how many calories they’ve eaten and how many they’ve burned each day are the ones actually losing weight! (pg. 49)
• If we followed you around for a few days we would likely observe two predominant activities. One, you would spend most of your time battling your whirlwind, and two, a lot of your remaining time would be spent worrying over your lag measures. The problem with these two activities is that they consume enormous energy and produce little, if any, leverage beyond sustaining your whirlwind. And it’s leverage that you need the most. (pg. 52)
• To achieve a goal you’ve never achieved before, you must do things you’ve never done before. Look around you. Who else has achieved this goal or something like it? What did they do differently? Analyze carefully any barriers you foresee and decide together how to overcome them. Use your imagination. What haven’t you thought of that might make all the difference? (pg. 53)
• Find the right lever among many possibilities is perhaps the toughest and most intriguing challenge for leaders trying to execute a WIG. (pg. 53)
• Lead measure data is almost always more difficult to acquire than lag measure data, but you must pay the price to track your lead measures. (pg. 60)
• If you’re serious about your WIG, then you must create a way to track your lead measures. Without data, you can’t drive performance on the lead measures; without lead measures, you don’t have leverage. (pg. 60)
• Coming up with the right lead measures is really about helping everyone see themselves as strategic business partners and engaging them in dialogue about what can be done better or differently in order to achieve the WIGs. (pg. 63)
• The third discipline is to make sure everyone knows the score at all times, so that they can tell whether or not they are winning. (pg. 65)
• Simply put, people disengage when they don’t know the score. When they can see at a glance whether or not they are winning they become profoundly engaged. (pg. 66)
• A great team can’t function without a scoreboard that compels action. Without it, energy dissipates, intensity lags, and the team goes back to business as usual. (pg. 67)
• In implementing Discipline 3, you and your team need to build a players’ scoreboard, one that’s designed solely to engage the players on your team to win. (pg. 67)
• The fundamental purpose of a players’ scoreboard is to motivate the players to win. (pg. 68)
• Characteristics of a Compelling Players’ Scoreboard” (pg. 70-71)
1. “Is it simple? It has to be simple.”
2. “Can I see it easily? It has to be visible to the team.”
3. “Does it show lead and lag measures? It should show both the lead and lag measures.”
4. “Can I tell at a glance if I’m winning? It has to tell you immediately if you are winning or losing.”
• 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. (pg. 73)
• Many believe that engagement drives results, and so do we. However, we know now, and have witnessed consistently over the years, that results drive engagement. (pg. 75)
• People are most satisfied with their jobs (and therefore most motivated) when those jobs give them the opportunity to experience achievement. (pgs. 75-76)
• A winning team doesn’t need artificial morale boosting. All the psyching up and rah-rah exercises companies do to raise morale aren’t nearly as effective in engaging people as the satisfaction that comes from executing with excellence a goal that really matters. (pg. 76)
• Many leaders define execution simply as the ability to set a goal and achieve it. After years of teaching these principles, we can tell you that this definition is insufficient. But, as discussed above, what’s difficult—and rare—is the ability to achieve a critical goal while living in the midst of a raging whirlwind. (pg. 78)
• Accountability on our team is shared. We make commitments and then we’re accountable to our boss, but more important, to each other, for following through. (pg. 78)
• The focus of the WIG session is simple: to hold each other accountable for taking actions that will move the lead measures, resulting in the achievement of the WIG despite the whirlwind. (pg. 80)
• First, the WIG session should be held on the same day and at the same time every week. (pg. 80)
• Second, the whirlwind is never allowed into a WIG session. (pg. 81)
• WIG Session Outline (pg. 82)
1. Account: Report on commitments.
2. Review the scoreboard: Learn from successes and failures.
3. Plan: Clear the path and make new commitments.
• Committing each week (in the WIG session) to one or two specific actions that will directly affect your lead measures, and then reporting to each other in the next week’s WIG session on your results. (pg. 84)
• What are the one or two most important things I can do this week to impact the lead measures? (pg. 84)
• This focus on impacting the lead measures each week is critical because the lead measures are the team’s leverage for achieving the WIG. (pg. 84)
• Goals cannot sound noble but vague. Targets cannot be so blurry they can’t be hit. Your direction has to be so vivid that if you randomly woke one of your employees in the middle of the night and asked him, “Where are we going?” he could still answer in a half-asleep stupor. (pg. 86)
• As the leader you should often ask each team member “What can I do this week to clear the path for you?” (pg. 87)
• The WIG session is like an ongoing science experiment. Team members bring their best thinking as to how to influence the scoreboard. They commit to try new ideas, test hypotheses, and bring back the results. (pg. 88)
• While the leader of the WIG session is responsible for ensuring the quality of commitments, it’s critical that the commitments come from the participants. (pg. 89)
• If you simply tell your team what to do, they will learn little. But when they are able to consistently tell you what’s needed to achieve the WIG, they will have learned a lot about execution, and so will you. (pg. 89)
• The WIG session save your wildly important goals from being engulfed by the whirlwind. (pg. 89)
• The cadence of accountability can release the creativity of the team. (pg. 96)
• When you think of a team that has a culture of discipline and execution, you don’t expect to hear that they are also creative and innovative. (pg. 96)
• The WIG session encourages experimentation with fresh ideas. It engages everyone in problem-solving and promotes shared learning. It’s a forum for innovative insights as to how to move the lead measures, and because so much is at stake, it brings out the best thinking from every team member. (pg. 96)
• The cadence of accountability: the weekly meeting with others who have the same goal. They share stories, check the scoreboard (the scale), celebrate successes, and talk about lapses and what to do about them. Many participants say that weekly weigh-in is the most motivating thing about the program. (pg. 102)

Stages of Change

1. STAGE 1: Getting Clear – The leader and the team commit to a new level of performance. They are oriented to 4DX and develop crystal-clear WIGS, lag and lead measures, and a compelling scoreboard. They commit to regular WIG sessions. Although you can naturally expect varying levels of commitment, team members will be more motivated if they are closely involved in the 4DX work session. (pg. 107)
2. STAGE 2: Launch – Now the team is at the starting line. Whether you hold a formal kickoff meeting, or gather your team in a brief huddle, you launch the team into action on the WIG. But just as a rocket requires tremendous, highly focused energy to escape the earth’s gravity, the team needs intense involvement from the leader at this point of launch. (pg. 109)
3. STAGE 3: Adoption – Team members adopt the 4DX process and new behaviors drive the achievement of the WIG. You can expect resistance to fade and enthusiasm to increase as 4DX begins to work for them. They become accountable to each other for the new level of performance despite the demands of the whirlwind. (pg. 110)
4. STAGE 4: – Optimization
   At this stage, the team shifts to a 4DX mindset. You can expect them to become more purposeful and more engaged in their work as they produce results that make a difference. They will start looking for ways to optimize their performance—they now know what “playing to win” feels like. (pg. 111)
5. STAGE 5: Habits – When 4DX becomes habitual, you can expect not only to reach the goal but also to see a permanent rise in the level of your team’s performance. The ultimate aim of 4DX is not just to get results, but to create a culture of excellent execution. (pg. 112)
• Models: The models are not only the top performers but the most engaged. They embrace 4DX enthusiastically and use it to take their performance to a higher level. They are also the ones you’d most like to close. (pg. 113)
• Resisters: The resisters are the opposite. When you introduce 4DX, some will immediately tell you why it won’t work and how impossible it will be to implement given the demands of their whirlwind. Others will withdraw from the effort and hope no one notices, but 4DX makes their resistance highly visible to everyone. (pg. 113)
• Potentials: The potentials are those with the capacity to be top performers, but who haven’t arrived. Some may lack the focus on goals or the specific knowledge they need to improve. Others may need the added pressure of accountability to motivate them. (pg. 114)
• Top Down and Bottom Up: Ideally, both the leader and the team participate in defining the WIGs. Only the leader can provide clarity about what matters most. The leaders is ultimately responsible for the WIG, but shouldn’t engage team members solely through the exercise of authority. To reach the goal and to transorm the team, team members must have active input in definingn the WIG: “No involvment, no commitment.” (pg. 120-121)
• Lead measures must be both predictive of achieving the WIG and influenceable by the team. (pg. 136)
• People give less than their best and finest effort if no one is keeping score—it’s just human nature. And note the emphassis: People play differently when *they* are keeping score. (pg. 155)
• The purpose of a players’ scoreboard is to motivate the players to win. (pg. 156)
• A WIG session is unlike any other meeting you will ever attend. It has a singular purpose: to refocus the team on the WIG despite the daily whirlwind. (pg. 172)
• Team members are more likely to take ownership of commitments they come up with themselves. (pg. 181)
• You should always be looking for new and better ways to move the lead measures. (pg. 183)

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