4/19/23 – The Whirlwind of our daily urgent and important tasks compete every day as we try to focus on our work goals and even our personal goals. When trying to focus on change, these day-to-day tasks on the job can easily get in the way. They can keep our strategy of execution for our identified Wildly Important Goal from being effective because they make us “squirrel” with their distractions.
With 4DX, it is key to separate the urgent from the important and have the discipline to focus on the WIG. To do this, a team should just have only 1 WIG, because having too many goals can spread a team too thin. It’s easy to focus on the lag measures that will take time when focusing on the goal because they are at the forefront of what shows movement toward the goal. However, just like it takes time to turn an aircraft carrier, you have to focus on the motions to do it which are the lead measures and not look at the horizon constantly for the final turning of the carrier which represents the lag measures.
Keeping a scoreboard of what needs to be done to on each of the lead measures with the lag measure on top keeps the team accountable for their actions. The results need to be personal to each team member so that they feel like they are winning because most people like to win.
Focusing on the key questions helps drive those lead measures to keep the actions for the lead measures occurring regularly with a predictable format of accountability during the everyday distractions. By having a regular system of accountability while in the whirlwind, this will enable the actions for lead measures to occur regularly to ultimately meet the WIG for the team.
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2016). The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. Simon and Schuster
Wings and a Wand 