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1-Page Summary of Execution
Overview
This book is about how to reliably accomplish goals and plans in a business. It focuses on the four disciplines that will help you do this: Discipline of Focus, Discipline of Accountability, Discipline of Execution and Discipline of Leadership. The authors are associates from FranklinCovey, a management consultancy firm.
There are many reasons why companies don’t stick to their commitments. One of the main reasons is that new projects and goals take up most people’s time, which leads them to neglect the day-to-day tasks they’re supposed to be doing. The authors say that if we can give employees only a small amount of time for each project, but make sure they get things done in that time frame, then we’ll have more success with commitment fulfillment.
The first step is to pick one or two goals that will have the greatest impact in your business. The second step is to break these goals into leading indicators and create a scoreboard for them. In the third step, each employee discusses his progress toward those goals with the team at weekly meetings, followed by discussions about what each person must commit to doing in the coming week.
The four disciplines of execution are a process that depends on consistency, strong leadership, and accountability. It’s important to define the WIGs (Wildly Important Goals) and lead measures for each team. Once you do this, you can train leaders how to carry out the plan with regular coaching and assess progress on a quarterly basis. Many FranklinCovey clients have used these techniques to implement their programs successfully.
Key Takeaways
Businesses face a lot of obstacles in pursuing their goals. The biggest obstacle is the whirlwind of activity that’s urgent but not important. To overcome this, businesses need to narrow down their list of goals to the one or two most important ones and focus on those for a certain time period.
A good wildly important goal (WIG) has a high impact and is defined with input from both leaders and team members. It is measurable, directly impacted by the team and its leader, and can be predicted based on lead measures that the employees can affect.
Lead measures are specific behaviors or the outcomes of those behaviors, but they must be high-impact and ongoing. The third discipline of execution is creating a simple scoreboard that shows employees’ progress toward wildly important goals and lead measures relative to projected progress.
Employees should keep track of their wins and celebrate them. Someone needs to be responsible for keeping the scoreboard updated.
The fourth discipline of execution is to hold weekly meetings that track progress on the lead measures. Employees should also commit to their own goals for the coming week.
To implement the four disciplines, a leader must take six steps. The first step is to clearly define the WIG and lead measures, then train leaders on how to use them. After that, you should launch an initiative with your team members and continue coaching them throughout its duration. Finally, you need to give quarterly updates on progress towards achieving your goals.
When a leader wants to implement an idea, there are several obstacles that can get in the way. However, it is possible to overcome those obstacles if the leader enforces consistency and accountability among team members.
Key Takeaway 1: The chief obstacle to sustaining progress toward goals in a business is the whirlwind of everyday activity that is more urgent but less important.
Many projects in business are not successful because they don’t last long enough to achieve their goals. Special tasks, which are important but not urgent, may get buried by daily activities and never be completed. The best strategy is to find ways for new projects to take a small amount of time so that the important but less urgent tasks can still be accomplished during the day.
