The 4 Disciplines of Execution Summary & Review (Chris McChesney) - ANIMATED 2021
Summary
TLDRThe video introduces the 'Four Disciplines of Execution' (4DX) framework, a system designed to help achieve goals through focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability. It explains how setting 'Wildly Important Goals' (WIGs), tracking progress with measurable actions, maintaining a visible scorecard, and regularly holding accountability sessions can turn plans into reality. Using examples like Mike's weight loss journey, the video highlights the importance of practical execution rather than just planning, emphasizing continuous progress and motivation. The video sets up for further implementation steps in the next video.
Takeaways
- 💡 Coming up with a strategy is much easier than executing it, which is why many great plans fail over time.
- 📘 The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) provide a system for achieving goals effectively: Focus, Leverage, Engagement, and Accountability.
- 🎯 **Focus**: Choose three 'Wildly Important Goals' (WIGs) to drive your life. These goals should be challenging but attainable, measurable, and primarily depend on your own efforts.
- 📝 To set WIGs, follow four steps: brainstorm potential goals, assess their impact, ensure they are measurable and self-dependent, and then write them down.
- ⚖️ **Leverage**: Identify the right lead measures, or actions, that will move you from point A (current state) to point B (desired outcome). Lead measures should be both predictive and influenceable.
- 📊 **Engagement**: Maintain a compelling scorecard to keep yourself motivated. It should be simple, visible, and easy to understand at a glance.
- 🏆 Leverage your natural competitive nature by using the scorecard to compete with yourself and track progress.
- 📅 **Accountability**: Schedule regular review sessions to track your progress, analyze what went well or poorly, and make necessary adjustments to stay on track.
- 🔄 Regular accountability ensures continuous improvement and helps to overcome distractions from everyday tasks, referred to as the 'whirlwind.'
- 🚀 Successful execution involves applying these four disciplines in a structured manner, rather than just making a plan and failing to implement it.
Q & A
What are the four disciplines of execution mentioned in the script?
-The four disciplines of execution mentioned in the script are focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability.
What are 'Wildly Important Goals' (WIGs)?
-WIGs are medium to long-term goals that are considered to be of utmost importance in one's life, such as having a certain amount of money invested by a certain age or losing weight by a specific date.
How does one determine their WIGs?
-To determine WIGs, one should brainstorm for impactful changes, assess which three would have the highest impact, test their measurability and dependency, and finally state them specifically and concisely.
What is the importance of having measurable goals?
-Measurable goals are important because they provide a way to keep score of progress, which helps in maintaining motivation.
What is a 'lag measure' in the context of the script?
-A 'lag measure' refers to the end results or outcomes that indicate whether the goals have been reached, such as weight loss or savings.
How is a 'lead measure' different from a 'lag measure'?
-A 'lead measure' quantifies the actions that directly influence the achievement of the goals, whereas a 'lag measure' is the result or outcome that indicates the achievement of the goal.
Why is it important to have a compelling scorecard for engagement?
-A compelling scorecard keeps individuals motivated and engaged by providing a visual representation of progress towards goals, leveraging our natural competitive instincts.
What are the three requirements of a good scorecard?
-A good scorecard should be simple, visible, and quickly readable, allowing anyone to quickly understand the status of the progress towards the goals.
How does accountability help in achieving goals?
-Accountability ensures that an individual stays on course towards their goals by regularly reviewing progress, identifying issues, and making necessary adjustments.
What does the author call the daily tasks that can overshadow goal achievement?
-The author refers to the daily tasks that can overshadow goal achievement as 'the whirlwind.'
What is the significance of scheduling regular accountability sessions?
-Scheduling regular accountability sessions helps in maintaining focus on goals, tracking progress, and making continuous improvements towards achieving them.
Outlines
📘 Introduction to the Four Disciplines of Execution
The paragraph introduces the concept of execution being more challenging than strategy formulation, and presents a book that outlines a system to achieve goals through four disciplines: focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability. It emphasizes the importance of applying these principles in a specific way. The first discipline, focus, is explained with the concept of 'Wildly Important Goals' (WIGs), which are medium to long-term goals that significantly impact one's life. The paragraph guides through a four-step process to identify WIGs: brainstorming potential impactful changes, assessing which have the highest impact, testing their measurability and personal dependence, and finally stating them clearly. An example is given with Mike, who lists his goals and refines them into measurable WIGs with deadlines.
🔧 Leveraging Lead Measures to Achieve Goals
This paragraph delves into the second discipline, leverage, which is about finding the right actions to move from a current state (point A) to a desired state (point B). It uses the analogy of a lever to move a heavy rock, explaining that lead measures are the actions that significantly influence the achievement of goals. Lag measures are the end results that indicate whether goals are met. The paragraph discusses how Mike's lead measures, such as calorie restriction and exercise, are both predictive of weight loss and influenceable by him. The importance of focusing on lead measures to ensure the achievement of goals is highlighted.
🏆 The Power of Engagement Through Scorecards
The third discipline, engagement, is the focus of this paragraph. It discusses how keeping a compelling scorecard can motivate individuals to achieve their goals, leveraging the natural human tendency to compete. The paragraph outlines three requirements for an effective scorecard: simplicity for easy updates, visibility for constant reminders, and quick readability to assess progress at a glance. Using Mike's example, it shows how he creates a scorecard to track his daily calories and exercise time, which he places on his fridge for motivation.
🗓 Accountability for Continuous Improvement
The final paragraph covers the fourth discipline, accountability, which is crucial for staying on course towards goals. It contrasts accountability with the 'whirlwind' of daily trivial tasks that can derail goal pursuit. The paragraph explains that accountability must be precise and regularly scheduled. Mike's accountability practice is highlighted, where he schedules weekly reviews to assess his progress, identify issues, and devise solutions for improvement. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the importance of execution over just making plans, and hints at the next video's focus on implementation.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Execution
💡Wildly Important Goals (WIGs)
💡Focus
💡Lever
💡Lag Measures
💡Lead Measures
💡Engagement
💡Scorecard
💡Accountability
💡Whirlwind
Highlights
The book introduces four disciplines of execution to achieve goals: focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability.
Focus involves choosing three 'Wildly Important Goals' (WIGs) that are medium to long term and impactful.
WIGs should be challenging yet attainable, and they should drive your life.
To identify WIGs, start by brainstorming changes that would impact your life the most.
Assess which goals from your brainstorming list would have the highest overall impact.
Test potential goals for measurability and dependency on external factors.
Write down your goals specifically and concisely.
Leveraging involves finding the right actions to move from point A to point B.
Lag measures are the results that indicate if goals have been reached.
Lead measures quantify actions that significantly impact goals.
Lead measures should be predictive and influenceable.
Engagement is enhanced by keeping a compelling scorecard that motivates like competition.
A good scorecard is simple, visible, and quickly readable.
Accountability ensures staying on course and continuous improvement.
Accountability requires precise and regularly scheduled reviews.
The system is designed to prevent goals from being overtaken by day-to-day tasks.
Implementation of the four disciplines is crucial for achieving goals.
The book emphasizes execution over just making a plan and feeling good about it.
Transcripts
How many times have you come up with a magnificent plan, showed it off to all your
friends and family, been sure it is the solution to all your problems, only to have it die a slow
death over the next few weeks? Many times we've all done it, so I'm not pointing fingers here.
That's because coming up with a strategy is much easier than executing it, and this is
where this book comes into play. The authors came up with four disciplines of execution.
It's a system that makes achieving goals totally possible. The four principles are focus, leverage,
engagement, and accountability. If all this sounds super general, it is because it is. But,
before we show it off and move one to the next video, let me tell you the secret sauce. It is
how you apply this principle that matters, and the four DX framework does it in a very
particular way, so let's get cracking. Number one is focus, but what does that even
mean? Stay with me. In this very first step. We choose three goals to focus on. The author calls
this wildly important goals or WIGs. These are medium to long term goals that drive your life.
Things like have $1.2 million invested in the stock market by the age of 40, or lose 5 kgs by
June 2022, or get promoted to senior manager by the age of 30. These are basically any goals that
you would consider wildly important for your life. There is no right, there is no wrong here. Only
you know what drives you. These goals need to be challenging, but attainable. That's all fine and
dandy, but how do you even come up with these goals in the first place? There are four steps
to settling on a wildly important goal. First, it all starts by brainstorming. Ask
yourself what kind of change would have the most impact on your life. Think of things that
are not currently working, or the things that if they're made to work a little bit better,
would have a dramatic impact on your life. Now, list them all out. Next, you need to assess.
Out of everything you listed, which three would have the overall highest impact? Now
you need to test your potential goals, and there are two main considerations here.
Is it measurable? Is there a way to keep score of your progress? If the answer is no, it is not a
good candidate because the scoring system would help keep you motivated. Second, does it depend
mainly on you? If you need to enlist outside help for more than 20% of your goal, it might
be a challenge. When things depend on outside factors or other people, the challenge for you
is even greater. Finally, state, or put simply, write it all down. Be specific and concise.
Now let's look at an example. This is Mike. He's really excited to start executing his plans,
and aren't we all? Mike takes out a piece of paper and lists all the goals that are important to him.
These are things like become more healthy, save more money, get a dog, buy a dependable car,
travel the world, and so on. When he assesses things and test them as we talked about,
he realizes that becoming more healthy or buying a dependable car will have the most impact on his
life. But, they're not very measurable, at least not yet. Let's transform them.
Become more healthy becomes to lose 5 kgs by March 2022. Buy a dependable car becomes buy a Toyota
RAV4, two to three years old at a cost of no more than 30K by April 2022. Now we're talking. These
are specific goals that depend solely on Mike, and have a specific deadline and way to keep track of.
WIGs done. Good job, Mike. Now comes leverage. In this discipline,
you learn how to get from point A to point B. Imagine that your point A is a huge heavy
rock. No matter how hard you push against it, it's not going to move. But, if you apply a little
lever, the rock starts to move, and not by a lot, but it does move and in the right direction.
The second discipline is all about finding the right lever so you can move your goals from
point A to point B. Points A and B are what the author calls lag measures. These are results. They
are very important, as they tell you if you've reached your goals or not. Have you lost weight,
have you enough money, and so on. The lever in the rock is called a lead measure,
and lead measures quantify the actions that have the most impact on your goals.
Now back to Mike for an example. His lag measures are, right now, he's 70 kgs, which is point A,
and he wants to be 65, point B. His lead measures are the how he'll get to achieve those goals.
How does one lose weight? Less calories in and more exercise and physical activity.
This is a good time to mention that a good lead measure has two characteristics. First of all,
it's predictive. A change in the lead measure must create a change in the lag measure. Two,
it's influenceable. You must be able to influence it without dependence on someone else. If Mike is
to restrict his calories, it will for sure lead to a faster weight loss, so it's predictive.
Who controls how much and what Mike eats? Mike, so his calorie intake is also influenceable.
If Mike concentrates on actions that most influence his goals, his goals become not an if,
but a when. The less he eats and the more he exercises, the faster he'll get to point B.
Now, let's move on. Number three is engagement. How do you best engage into a goal? By keeping
a compelling scorecard. Humans are naturally wired to compete. We become highly motivated and engaged
where there is an opportunity to win. Just look at every sport on the planet. The goal is always to
win, to have a better score. The moment you take the score away, people stop trying so hard. Let's
use this hard wired tendency to your advantage. If you're like Mike, right now you might be thinking,
"That's all nice, but I want to lose weight, and there's no one to compete with." True,
so how about you compete with yourself? Come up with your own scorecard that forces you to act.
A good scorecard has three requirements. First of all, it is simple. A more minimal
scorecard is much easier to update. Think of any competitive sport. It usually has a simple score,
and time left in the game. It is a scorecard, not a spreadsheet, so keep it simple. A good scorecard
is also visible. Put it next to your bed, on your bathroom mirror. Whatever it is in your case,
you should not have to turn on your laptop or log into a site to update it. Finally, a good
scorecard is quickly readable. Anyone looking at it should be able to tell within seconds
if you're winning or losing. In the case of Mike, he makes a simple scorecard that keeps track of
his daily calories and time spent exercising, and sticks it on his fridge. Three disciplines down,
one more to go. Give it up for Mike. Finally, the last one is accountability.
Disciplines one to three are to set up the execution. In discipline four is where the
action is. Without the accountability piece, the goal will eventually be overtaken by what
the author calls the whirlwind, or just the day to day menial, trivial tasks. Basically,
accountability is what will ensure you are staying on course. There are two parts to the
accountability discipline that you need in order to make this step productive.
Accountability needs to be precise and regularly scheduled. Here's how it works for Mike. He
schedules 15 minutes every Sunday evening for an accountability session. The idea is to quickly
review his last seven days progress, and see things like what went well, what didn't go well,
how can he do better next week. He narrows down the specific issues he face, and comes up with
a precise solution to over the pitfalls. The continuous review and adjustment will
make sure not only that he stays on course, but that he's continually improving. Not to mention,
the personal satisfaction of seeing his progress week after week will keep him happy and motivated.
If you followed along this far, you saw how Mike went from being caught in the whirlwind of
day to day tasks, to figure out what his wildly important goals are, and then he took the most
important step: the execution of the plan. After all, the book is called The Four Disciplines Of
Execution, not the four steps of making a plan, feeling good about it,
and never implement it. Right now, you're either super motivated to get started, or you're little
bit confused because this is a rather complex system. Either way, let's talk implementation.
How do you take all of this fantastic information and actually apply it? What is the first step?
Let's talk implementation in the next video. Click right here, I'll see you right there.
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