The day-to-day activities we are responsible for, both at work and outside of work, make it challenging to fathom being able to achieve a big goal.

But there is a way!

In the book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling, the authors lay out an operating system that will help us in achieving really important goals, despite the whirlwind of our life. They call the approach 4DX, short for The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Follow the disciplines in order and you’ll have a great chance at achieving your goal.

The Whirlwind

Before we get into the 4 Disciplines, we need to understand what the whirlwind is. Think of all the things you need to do day-to-day to meet expectations of your roles both at work at and home. If you’re an engineer, perhaps you design, implement, build and test for a good portion of your day. But you also need to produce documentation, present design proposals, mentor new team members, and report results. And let’s not forget the timekeeping (I currently record various parts of my time in four different systems). At home you may have chores, or outside interests that have their own demands on your time day-to-day. All of these urgent activities comprise the whirlwind.

The whirlwind can give us the impression that we don’t have time to accomplish really big goals, or as the authors say, Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). This is where 4DX comes in to save us. The four disciplines, when applied, help us achieve WIGs despite the whirlwind.

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important

There are goals, and there are Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). WIGs are goals that we need to focus on right now. These are goals that we feel we need to achieve that will result in a big impact. That doesn’t mean we abandon our other goals and priorities, it just means that we treat the WIGs with special care, with a special approach. In this case, we’ll describe how to approach the goals with 4DX.

We only want to be working on one, maybe two WIGs at a time. Remember, we still have other goals and the whirlwind to contend with. By reducing our WIGs to one or two, we can execute on those goals precisely and intentionally. According to the authors, “…human beings are genetically hardwired to do one thing at a time with excellence.” (p. 23) So, don’t take on the world of WIGs, instead start with one.

Choosing a WIG is challenging because, as the authors state, we often ask the wrong question. We ask, “What’s most important?” Ask yourself that right now. What’s most important for you to put a goal around, at home or at work? Maybe you have an answer, but likely there are many goals and ideas to choose from. The authors suggest a different question:

“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?”

The 4 Disciplines of Execution by McChesney, Covey, and Huling, p. 32

That question changes things, doesn’t it!

Much of the language of the book is geared towards business, but a WIG doesn’t have to be confined to the business world. Want to lose weight? Learn a language? Become healthier? 4DX can be applied to these personal goals as well. Ask yourself what area of your life would benefit most from achieving a focused goal and consider that as your WIG.

WIGs use a formula to describe what success looks like. The formula is:

from X to Y by when

WIG formula

X is the starting point and Y is the end state. When of course gives us the timeline in which to accomplish the goal.

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

We need to understand what lead and lag measures are in order to comply with this discipline. The lag measure is basically the Y in our WIG formula. The authors use losing weight as an example of a WIG (“Decrease total body weight from 190 pounds to 175 pounds by May 30”). Your target weight is the Y, and is the lag measure. It’s called a lag measure because you can only measure it once all the actions have been taken to get there. At this point of measurement, you can’t influence the actions that got you there. The measure lags the actions taken. The lag measure indicates if you’ve met your goal or have not met your goal.

A lead measure, on the other hand, measures something that will tell you how likely you are to meet your goal. These take a bit of thinking to come up with. One might try to use how much you weigh as a lead measure in the weight loss goal. But weighing yourself does not influence how much you weigh, and can’t be used as a reliable predictor of reaching our goal. However, calorie intake and how many calories we burn are two items we can measure, and, if acted upon consistently, can be a good predictor of the likelihood of reaching our goal. By being intentional about how we fuel our body and how we exercise, and measuring our calorie intake and burn, we have a good predictor of our success.

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

In sports we use a scoreboard to let the players and fans know exactly what the score is at every moment of the game. Everyone knows at a glance who is winning. Similarly, 4DX uses a scoreboard to communicate the status of the goal in order to engage the people involved and show the likelihood of achieving the goal.

From the authors, a good scoreboard has the following characteristics:

  • Simple
  • Visible
  • Shows lead and lag measures
  • Can tell at a glance if goal will be achieved

A scoreboard is not useful if everyone who is involved in achieving the goal can’t see it. How do they know where their progress stands in relation to the overall goal? Having the lead and lag measures on the scoreboard also helps in understanding what adjustments need to be made to in order to keep on track and meet the goal.

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

“…what’s difficult – and rare – is the ability to achieve a critical goal while living in the midst of a raging whirlwind .”

The 4 Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling, p. 78

This discipline prescribes a WIG session at least weekly where the team meets for 20-30 minutes. These meetings should take place on the same day and at the same time each week, and full participation is mandatory. The WIG session keeps everyone accountable, and without it, momentum for achieving the WIG can be lost.

The agenda for a WIG session is (p. 173):

  • Report on commitments: what impact did you have on the lead measures in the last week?
  • Review the Scoreboard: analyze whether the commitments are impacting the lead measure, and whether the lead measure is actually impacting the lag measure.
  • Discuss what is working, what is not working, and what adjustments need to be made to be successful.
  • Make new commitments: Each team member commits to work for the coming week that will impact the lead measures. Team members keep each other accountable.

If a team member does not make their commitments, per 4DX they need to make up the work they committed to, in addition to the new commitment for the week. There’s no sliding with 4DX!

tl;dr

4DX is short for The 4 Disciplines of Execution. The disciplines are: Focus on the Wildly Important, Act on the Lead Measures, Keep a Compelling Scoreboard, Create a Cadence of Accountability. 4DX is an operating system. When the disciplines are followed in order, it provides an approach to achieving very important goals despite the urgent matters of the day-to-day, called the whirlwind.

engineer your life

  • Think about what area in your life would benefit from a wildly important goal, one that would have great impact on your life even if everything else stayed constant. Consider making this a WIG.
  • Read the book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, by McChesney, Covey and Huling. The book goes into detail on selecting a WIG, finding lead measures, and creating a compelling scoreboard.