The 4 Disciplines of Execution:  Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney,  Sean Covey, and Jim Huling, Free Press 2012

What is the enemy of strategic, successful execution?  The authors warn readers tackling life and work challenges about what they call The Whirlwind – the massive amount of energy necessary just to keep an operation going on a day-to-day basis.  Further, they advise that The Whirlwind is urgent and The Whirlwind winds every time. 

Let’s go with this a moment because this is an energizing, positive idea that can make a difference in your life:

1.        Focus on the Wildly Important, those few goals that really matter, instead of expending mediocre effort for a scattering of dozens of goals;

2.       Act on Lead Measures.  Carefully track the lead measures and let the lag measures take care of themselves;

3.       Keep a Compelling Scoreboard, and make sure that everybody knows that score at all times so that they will know if they are winning or not!  Brilliant!

4.       Create a Cadence of Accountability, with frequent, regular accountability sessions whose only purpose is to advance the Wildly Important Goals.

Wow, how would the Affordable Care Act rollout or Target’s database security breaches been resolved had these four principles been adhered to?

The authors’ examples of the four disciplines are stunning.  But their quotes and examples from The Whirlwind are the most telling – “if you’re currently trying to execute five, ten or even twenty important goals, the truth is that your team can’t focus… dilutes your efforts… makes success almost impossible.”  This book is almost a contrarian voice to the usual top-down hierarchical approach because it demonstrates a more proactive approach to change.  In fact, in Discipline #2, Act on the Lead Measures, the authors emphasize that Lag measures which focus on measurements of performance that have already been completed, such as revenue, profit, market share – history. 

But by focusing team efforts on Lead Measures, the authors hope to prevent a cycle of Lag measure failure followed by more Whirlwind activity focusing on too many problems. 

                “Lead measures are the measures of the most high-impact things your team

                Must do to reach the goal…. It must be predictive, and it can be influenced by team members.”

Examples taken from Opryland and a large retailer illustrate this very different approach to goal setting and execution.  In the midst of dozens of possible campaigns, the team members chose those few key battles that they knew would win final success.  The way they approached customer engagement, stock outs and checkout speed would eventually earn them better Lag measures but, in the daily continuous improvement work, these particular items were “first things first.”  And they delivered.

For readers who are tired of management by objectives, or complex strategic maneuvers built on historical measures, this is an engaging and thought-provoking book.  For decades we have looked to teams to fill in the gap between high-level strategies, and on-the-floor activities, and this book delivers a unique approach to execution that transitions organizations to more realistic, achievable methods. 

The Mill Girl verdict:  Score another success for the Franklin Covey guys.