[BOOKCLUB] THE 4 DISCIPLINES OF EXECUTION - DISCIPLINE 4: CREATE A CADENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

CreateACadenceOfAccountability.md

THE 4 DISCIPLINES OF EXECUTION

DISCIPLINE 4: CREATE A CADENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Discipline 4 is where execution actually happens. As Discipline 1, 2, and 3 set up the game. But until you apply Discipline 3, your team isn't in the game.

• Discipline 1: WIG for an organization and breaks it down into a set of specific, measurable targets
• Discipline 2: Define the lead measures that will enable the team to achieve that goal
• Discipline 3: Build a players' scoreboard that's designed solely to engage the players on your team to win

Definition of accountability

• In most organizations

  • The annual performance review, hardly an engaging experience whether you are giving or receiving the review
  • It's always top down. We meet with the boss periodically and he lets us know how we're doing and what we should focus on next

• In a 4DX organization

  • Making personal commitments to the entire team to move the scores forward and then following through in a disciplined way
  • It's shared. We make commitments and then we're accountable to our boss, but more important, to each other, for following through

The WIG session

• Your team meets at least weekly in a WIG session
• The meeting lasts no longer than twenty or thirty minutes
• It has a set agenda and goes quickly
• What we have learned, what we have accomplished

The focus of the WIG session:

• To hold each other accountable for taking the actions that will move the lead measures, resulting in the achievement of the WIG despite the whirlwind
• To ensure that this focus is achieve every week, two rules of WIG sessions must absolutely be followed
  1. The WIG session should be held on the same day and at the same time every week
  • Without it, your team will never be able to establish a sustained rhythm of performance
  • Missing even a single week causes you to lose valuable momentum, and this loss of momentum impacts your results
  2. The whirlwind is never allowed into a WIG session
  • No matter how urgent an issue may seem, discussion in the WIG session is limited solely to actions and results that move the scoreboard
  • If you need to discuss other things, hold a staff meeting after the WIG session

The three-part agenda for a WIG session

1. Account: Report on commitments

• "I committed to make a personal call to three customers who gave us lower scores. I did, and here's what I leaned..."
• "I committed to book at least three prospects for a site visit and ended up getting four!"
• "I met with our VP, but wasn't able to get the approval we wanted. Here's why..."

2. Review the scoreboard: Lean from success and failures

• "Our lag measure is green, but we've got a challenge with one of our lead measures that just fell to yellow. Here's what happened..."
• "We're trending upward on our lead measures, but out lag measure isn't moving yet. We've agreed as a team to double our efforts this week to get the score moving."
• "Although we're tracking toward achieving our WIG, we implemented a great suggestion from a customer this week that improved our lead measure score even further!"

3. Plan: Clear the path and make new commitments

• "I can clear your path on that problem. I know someone who..."
• "I'll make sure the inventory issue impacting our lead measure is resolved by next week, no matter what I have to do."
• "I'll meet with Bob on our numbers and come back next week with at least three ideas for helping us improve."

Staying focused in spite of the whirlwind

Every team member thinks about the same question:

What are the one or two most important things I can do this week to impact the lead measures?

The team members are not asking themselves:

What is the most important thing I can do this week?

Instead:

What can I do this week to impact the lead measures?

Create a cadence

In the WIG session with your boss, you would do:

1. Report on last week's commitments

• "Last week I committed to order new braces for the scaffolding so that conditions for all my crews were up to code and I completed that."

2. Review the scoreboard

• "My lag measure for safety incidents is currently averaging five per month, slightly above where we should be for this quarter. My lead measure for compliance to safety standards is green at 91 percent, but crews nine, eleven, and thirteen are hurting the score because they aren't consistently wearing their safety glasses."

3. Make commitments for the coming week

• "This week I will meet with the supervisors of crew nine, eleven, and thirteen, review their safety records, and ensure that they have enough safety glasses for everyone."

Each commitment must meet two standards:

1. The commitment must represent a specific deliverable
2. The commitment must influence the lead measure

The black and the gray

• The black blocks: Your WIG session commitments
• The gray blocks: Your whirlwind

The black block: 90 mins on each day, the gray doesn't want the black. The whirlwind will consume every moment of time.

WIG sessions are the antidote to all-gray weeks. When the discipline of holding WIG sessions is sustained (when you and your team force the black into the gray every week) not only will you make consistent progress toward your goals, you'll also begin to feel that you are in charge.

WIG sessions and engagement

Three reasons people disengage from work:

1. Anonymity: They feel their leaders don't know or care what they're doing
2. Irrelevance: They don't understand how their job makes a difference
3. Immeasurement: They cannot measure or assess for themselves the contribution they're making

On a team that keeps the cadence of WIG sessions:

1. They are in the spotlight at least once a week
2. They can see exactly how their commitments are moving the lead measures that drive a WIG
3. They have a clear and public scoreboard that is updated weekly to reflect their performance

A different kind of accountability

If your boss says: "Come see me in an hour. We need to have an accountability session.", you'd feel its not a good thing.

In a WIG session, it's not organizational but personal.

Creating an innovative culture

The power of 4DX

####Takeaways

• Discipline 1: Careful focus on a clear lag measure
  • losing a certain amount of weight within a certain time frame
  • from X to Y by when
• Discipline 2: Acting on the high-leverage lead measure of calories intake and output through exercise, measures that the participants can control
  • These lead measures are expressed in terms of points that are easily tracked
• Discipline 3: Regular scorekeeping and monitoring of the lead measures and the lag measure
  • A compelling scoreboard engages people and keeps them on track toward the goal
• Discipline 4: The cadence of accountability
  • The weekly meeting with others who have the same goal
  • The team members share stories, check the scoreboard, celebrate successes, and talk about lapses and what to do about them
  • Many participants say that the weekly weigh-in is the most motivating thing about the program