The 4 Disciplines of Execution

The 4 disciplines. Let’s take a quick look:

Discipline #1. We need to focus on our WILDLY IMPORTANT GOAL.

The 4DX guys call this your WIG.

Here’s the passage from Cal Newport’s Deep Work that made me buy the book: “As the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, ‘The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.’ They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of ‘wildly important goals.’ This simplicity will help focus an organization’s energy to a sufficient intensity to ignite real results.

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation to ‘spend more time working deeply’ doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. In a 2014 column titled, ‘The Art of Focus,’ David Brooks endorsed this approach of letting ambitious goals drive focused behavior, explaining: ‘If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasborg; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.’”

So… Step 1. What’s WILDLY Important to you? Like jumbo, really (!) important?

We need to start here. Say YES to it. Then say NO to all the distractions.

(btw: Sean Covey’s dad Stephen puts it this way in The 7 Habits: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good.’”)

Discipline #2. We need to “Act on lead measures.” Lead measures? Yah. Lead measures. We’ll talk more about it in a moment but for now, know this: Your Wildly Important Goal is a “lag” measure. It lags behind other things you do. It’s the RESULT of doing a bunch of things right. Your “lead” measure is the #1 thing you need to actually do to CREATE that result you want.

Most people create a goal (or lag measure) and then spend all their time looking at their stats to see if they hit it. The best executers, however, create their WIG then spend all their time measuring whether or not they’re crushing the LEAD measure stuff that will make the result a more likely byproduct.

So… What’s your Wildly Important Goal? What’s the #1 thing you need to do to hit it?

That leads us to Discipline #3: We need to “Keep a compelling scorecard” of our lead measure. We need to have a fun, compelling way to know, at a glance, whether or not we’re on track.

Then we have Discipline #4: We need to “Create a cadence of accountability.” In other words, we need to make sure we’re regularly checking in on how we’re doing with the whole process. We can’t set the system up and then walk away. The system REQUIRES us to stay on top of it. We need to be accountable to the lead measures if we want to a) enjoy the process and b) ensure a strong likelihood of high fiving ourselves as we achieve our WIG lag measure.

That’s the 4DX in a nutshell. Now, let’s take a peek at what gets in the way!

Meet: The Whirlwind. You know, your life. (Hah.)

There will ALWAYS (!) be a ton of urgent things pressing on us for our attention. We've gotta know that. And, then we need to make sure we prioritize the truly important things that will help us accomplish our most important goals.

The most powerful way I know how to do this is to make sure that I'm CREATIVE before I'm REACTIVE. As I've said many times, same letters. Very different outcomes.

In this case, from my perspective, that means prioritizing your Wildly Important Goal work *before* the whirlwind stuff. When? Every single day.

So… Quick questions.

#1: What's your Wildly Important Goal? (Note: If you have a tough time answering that question, then you might want to check out Purpose 101 + Goals 101 and make *discovering* your WIG your #1 WIG! And, remember, it's hard work to get clarity.)

This is my Wildly Important Goal: __________________________________.

#2: Have you hit your 451/212 degrees of activation energy on it?

Yes _____ No ______

If yes, awesome. If not, turn up the heat or find a goal that WOOPs you up.

Now… WHEN will you work on your Wildly Important Goal? Before or after you step into the whirlwind?

Before _______ After _______

Let's take the time to step back and create our Masterpiece Days such that we're doing the most important stuff *before* we get sucked into the vortex of the whirlwind!!

But only if we *really* want to achieve our WIG. :)

We now know that it all starts with our Wildly Important Goals. The authors have a number of rules for good WIGs. One of the most important? We need to FOCUS.

We’re not talking about focusing on 10 or 20 super important goals. Or 5 or 10. Or even 3 to 5. 1 to 2 MAX.

I recently had a strategy chat with one of my friends and mentors (and investors) who happens to be one of the world’s leading venture capitalists. His name is Matt McCall. His license plate says “KARMA.” We were talking about Optimize and some great opportunities.

Note: I’m looking at my page of notes that I keep in the front of my journal as a constant reminder as I type this.

Matt told me that every great business must know its “wheelhouse.” It needs to know what it can be *really* great at. He tells his entrepreneurs and CEOs to keep the moving pieces as simple as possible and that most companies make the big mistake of biting o more than they can chew.

Then he dropped this wisdom bomb on me: He said that a company has about an 80% chance of success in doing any one thing.

If they add a second thing, their likelihood of success becomes 80% x 80%. (For non-math majors, we just went from an 80% chance of success to a 64% chance.)

Add a third thing? We’re at 80% x 80% x 80%. Just over 50%. Not good.

Moral of story? We want to FOCUS. On our wheelhouse. That thing that we love to do that we can be great at and that the world needs (/is willing to pay for). As Matt says, “We do THIS over and over and over again.” We say YES! to that WIG. And NO to everything else. Easier said than done, of course. But let’s remember our 80%s.

P.S. The authors use Steve Jobs and his legendary focus as an example in this chapter. Jobs once said, “We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose. The table each of you is sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, yet Apple’s revenue last year was $40 billion.”

Lag vs. Lead.

We need both measures.

And... We need to focus on the lead measure.

Two things that make the lead measure so important:

1. It’s PREDICTIVE.

2. It’s INFLUENCEABLE.

You do X and Y is likely to happen. And, you can actually *do* X—it’s within your control!

So...

What’s your Lag measure of your Wildly Important Goal?

And, what’s your Lead?

Note: It’s supposed to be challenging. No pressure, no diamonds. If your brain doesn’t hurt figuring that out, you’re doing something wrong. (Hah!)

Remember: People play differently when they’re keeping score.

The authors tell us to imagine Serena and Venus Williams playing tennis. In one scenario, they’re just hitting the ball back and forth. In the other, they’re keeping score. Which one do you think generates a higher level of intensity? Another metaphor: Imagine yourself bowling into a curtain so you can’t see how you did. How fun would that be?

Keep score. Dial up your intensity.

P.S. Science agrees: What you measure improves. Remember our magical pedometer? Simply having a pedometer increased the number of steps people took by a mile.

P.P.S. In Finding Your Zone, Michael Lardon echoes this wisdom. He tells his pro golfers to have two score cards: One for the lag measure (their actual score) and one for the lead measure (whether or not they followed their pre-shot routine that LEADS to a great score!).

“…you don’t want to be magnificently trivial.” ← Right?

Recall Ryan Holiday’s epic passage from The Daily Stoic in which he tells us we’d be wise to say “I don’t care” to all the trivial stuff most people think they need to be masters of. Take a sword to the trivial. Say it with me now: “I don’t care.”

Then we have Peter Drucker who spent decades studying human behavior within organizations. Observing: “I’ve seen a great many people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.”

Yikes. Time for an inventory: What unimportant things need to go from your life?

Let’s nudge them out with a deep, courageous YES!!! to the Wildly Important Goals that make our souls ache with a terrifying longing.

And, let’s demonstrate that YES! with consistent, effective action on the things that truly matter. +1 +1 +1 all the way to the most wild and important goal: Actualizing our potential in service to the world.