Our management team attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this year. One of our favorite speakers was Chris McChessney. Chris is a VP at Franklin Covey and an excellent communicator. Here are some of the notes from his talk.
Chris’ Book: The Four Disciplines of Execution
Talk Subject: The Disciplines of Execution
What do leaders struggle with more: strategy or execution?
What are leaders educated in: strategy or execution?
The hardest thing a leader will ever do is to drive a strategy that will change behavior.
Edwards Demming: Anytime the majority of people behave a particular way the majority of the time – the problem isn’t the people – it’s the system. It’s the leader’s job to fix it.
Whirlwind – the energy required to keep the organization moving
4 Disciplines of Execution (Natural Laws of Evoking Change in People): (Disciplines)
- Focus
- Leverage
- Engagement
- Accountability
- Focus on the Wildly Important
- Goals in addition to the whirlwind (2-3 goals) # increase in operational goals, # decrease in excellence goals
- Goals achieved with excellence (2-3 goals)
- You must say no to good ideas – that’s how you reduce the # of goals and get focus
- There will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute.
- Separate all the energy it takes to maintain the whirlwind, from thwildlydy important
- WIG – Wildly Importnant Goal
- Key quesiton: What are the fewest number of battles necesary to win the war?
- The Primary WIG is made up of sub-Battle WIGs
- 3 Battles to Get to the Moon
- Navigation
- Propulsion
- Life Support
- Rules for Discipline
- Fewest Battles Necesary tot win the war
- One WIG per team at the same time
- You can veto, but don’t dictate to the subteams
- A WIGE must have a Gap (From X to Y by a Hard Time)
- JFK to NASA: We will put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade
- Accountability goes way up at NASA
- Morale and engagement dramatically increases at NAS
- Why: Because there’s a switch in people’s minds that GAME IS ON!
- Execution doesn’t like complexity
- Translate strategy to the front lines
- Simplicity and transparentcy are the 2 best friends
- WIG – is a lag measure
- Act on the Lead Measure
- Define the Lead Measures that are predictive and directs the WAG
- Lag Measures vs Lead Measures
- The lead measures are always actionable
- Everybody knows diet, very few know the number of calories consumed vs spent precisely
- Give the front line your best thinking/ideas to drive lead measures, but don’t dictate
- Payless’ leading indicator was the # of feet measured drove revenue
- Bad News: Lead measures are hard to get
- Good News: The team will engage the puzzle to figure it out
- Bad News: The team will forget in 3 days
- Define the Lead Measures that are predictive and directs the WAG
- Keep a complelling Scoreboard
- People play differently when they are keeping score (not when the boss keeps score)
- Look for a players scorecard, not a directive scoeboard
- Simple, highly measurable
- Tells us immediately if we are winning or losing
- Focus on simplicity
- People play differently when they are keeping score (not when the boss keeps score)
- Create a Cadence of Accountability
- The #1 driver of morale or engagement is whether the person feels they are winning
- Disciplines #1-3 create a winnable game
- Do the people who work for me feel like they are winning the game?
- Each Week: What are the 1-3 things I can do this week to drive the WAG this week?
- The key things you do each week are the things you wouldn’t know how to do and are NEVER URGENCT
- In the moment, urgency always trumps importance
- WIG Meeting:
- Report on last week’s commitment
- Review and Update the scoreboard
- Based on that: What’s my commitment for next week (don’t give people their commitment)
200,000 teams are running a WIG Process
You must pull information our of an organization- it’s not dictating.
The natural rules for strategy just happened to also be the same rules for engagement.