Getting the Right Things Done When There’s Too Much to Do

by Rod Collins

 

The work of management can be summed up in three words: strategy and execution. Strategy is doing the right things and execution is doing things right. Although this work may sound relatively straightforward and simple, many, if not most, companies are challenged in fulfilling these two basic accountabilities. That’s because the “right things” are not always intuitively obvious and doing things right often involves the coordination of many people distributed throughout an organization. Given today’s accelerating pace of change, management’s job has become even more difficult, which may explain why the replacement rate for the Fortune 1000 has risen from 35 percent to 70 percent since the mid 1980’s.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling is a timely contribution for business leaders who want to jumpstart their capacity to manage at the pace of change. The authors observe that the main obstacles to accomplishing key strategic goals are having too many goals and the press of day-to-day activities. The practice of maintaining an endless stream of initiatives as a response to changing markets may look good on paper but rarely works in reality because there are limits to the human capacity to do things with excellence. Furthermore, new initiatives always have to compete with what the authors call the “whirlwind,” which they define as “the massive amount of energy that’s necessary to keep your operation going on a day-to-day basis.” They also correctly point out that, without an effective discipline, the whirlwind will grab everyone’s time and attention, making it impossible to execute on anything new.

The four disciplines are a powerful framework for managing the twin accountabilities of strategy and execution. The first discipline is to Focus on the Wildly Important. The wisdom behind this discipline is accepting the counterintuitive notion that the way to do more is to focus on less. There is ample data and anecdotal evidence that the more business leaders try to do, the less they actually accomplish. It’s better to focus on only one or two really important goals and do them well because there’s no chance of accomplishing anything if business teams try to do a dozen goals at once. Focus is the only antidote to the whirlwind.

The second discipline, Act on Lead Measures, recognizes that all actions are not of equal value. Some actions are more valuable than others in driving execution. Discovering and tracking these key drivers is an important enabler of getting things done. The authors distinguish between two types of measures: lag and lead indicators. While most managers are riveted on lag indicators, such as profitability and market share, these measures are poor management tools because they are not actionable. Lag measures are like scores in a sporting event: They let you know whether you’ve won or lost the game, but they don’t help do anything about a game that’s already over. Management’s most important job is to affect performance before the game is over, and the best measures for doing that are leading indicators. According to the authors, a good lead measure has two characteristics, “it’s predictive and it can be influenced by the team members.” Lead measures are the keys to right action at the right time, which is why the authors consider lead measures to be the little-known secret of execution.

The third discipline is Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. The insight behind this discipline is the behavioral reality that people work differently when they are able to keep score for themselves. They shouldn’t have to rely on a supervisor’s opinion that all is going well. If managers want a high level of commitment and engagement from their people, these workers need to be able to judge for themselves whether they are winning or losing. That’s why the most compelling scorecards are the ones that are designed by the workers themselves.

The fourth and final discipline, Create a Cadence of Accountability, creates a rhythm of frequent periodic meetings where people feel accountable to each other. Oftentimes people are more responsive to peer pressure than to pleasing a supervisor. This discipline builds on that dynamic. In these regular, usually weekly, meetings, people report on whether or not they met commitments made at the prior meeting, what changes have occurred since the last gathering, and what commitments each team member will make for the next week. Because team members create their own commitments, there’s an increased likelihood that those commitments will be met.

In fast-changing times, the need to manage both change and the whirlwind has never been more challenging. This simple framework is a powerful tool for getting the right things done when there’s too much to do.

 

Rod Collins is Director of Innovation at Optimity Advisors and author of the upcoming book, Wiki Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and Collaborative World (AMACOM Books, November 1, 2013)