The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months

by Brian P. Moran

We have found that top performers—whether athletes or business professionals—are great, not because their ideas are better, but because their execution disciplines are better. These five disciplines are: 1. Vision 2. Planning 3. Process Control 4. Measurement 5. Time Use

Vision: A compelling vision creates a clear picture of the future. It is critical that your business vision aligns with and enables your personal vision. This alignment ensures a powerful emotional connection that promotes a sustained commitment, and continual action.

Planning: An effective plan clarifies and focuses on the top-priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve the vision. A good plan is constructed in a manner that facilitates effective implementation.

Process Control: Process control consists of a set of tools and events that align your daily actions with the critical actions in your plan. These tools and events ensure that more of your tim...

Measurement: Measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality. Effective measurement combines both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive fee...

Whenever we decide to make a change in our lives, we experience an emotional roller coaster. Psychologists Don Kelley and Daryl Connor describe this phenomenon in a paper called “The Emotional Cycle of Change.”

There are five stages that people move through emotionally when changing their behavior: I. Uninformed Optimism II. Informed Pessimism III. Valley of Despair IV. Informed Optimism V. Success and Fulfillment

Unfortunately, uninformed optimism doesn’t last long. As you learn more about the reality of what it takes to change, positive emotions can quickly sour. The second stage of change, informed pessimism, is characterized by a shift to a negative emotional state. At this point, the benefits don’t seem as real, important, or immediate, and the costs of the change are apparent. You start to question if the change is really worth the effort and begin to look for reasons to abandon the effort. If that’s not bad enough, things get worse.

If you quit on change when you are in the valley of despair, you go back to the first stage, uninformed optimism, which is a whole lot more fun than being in the valley!

The 12 Week Year is a closed system in that it contains everything you need to succeed. In our two-day workshop we have the participants list everything it takes to excel. Then, we list all those items on a flip chart. Typically, there are more than 20 and the list fills one to two large sheets of paper. When we go through each item, every one of them is represented in these disciplines and principles; that is why if you apply the 12 Week Year fully, as a complete system, you can’t help but improve.

Unfortunately, when we imagine a future that is significantly bigger than our current reality, we can begin to think that it is impossible for us. We can see others who have achieved great things, but we start to think that there is no way that we can get there. When you start to envision a significant accomplishment that is well beyond what you’ve achieved in the past, the question most people immediately ask is: How would I do this? This is the wrong question so early in the process. The fact is, you don’t know how to do it because if you did, you would likely be doing it already and living that reality. The fact that you don’t know how to do it creates the perception that it is impossible, at least for you, and it makes you think of new goals on a sliding scale of impossibility to certainty.

There are three time horizons that you’ll want to focus your vision on: 1. Long-term aspirations 2. Mid-term goals, about three years into the future 3. 12 Weeks (covered in the next chapter)

Take a few minutes right now and think about all of the things that you want to have, do, and be in your life. What is most important to you physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, professionally, and personally? How much time freedom do you want? What income do you desire? Write everything you can think of on a sheet of paper; leave nothing off the page. Now, take the items from your page that you connect with emotionally and construct a vision for your life 5, 10, 15 years into the future. Be bold, be courageous; create a life vision that inspires you and fulfills your purpose. There are no right or wrong answers. This is the life you deeply desire.

When you understand the true power of vision, you will want to spend more time connecting with your own vision to begin to free yourself from the self-imposed limitations that have held you back. Vision is the starting point of all high performance.

Pitfall 1: You don’t take the power of vision seriously.

Pitfall 2: The vision isn’t meaningful to you.

Pitfall 3: Your vision is too small.

Success Tip 1: Share it with others. Sharing your vision increases your commitment to it. When you tell someone else what you want in life, you feel more responsibility to act.

Success Tip 2: Stay in touch with your vision. Print it out and keep it with you. Review it each morning and update it every time that you discover ways to make it more vivid and meaningful to you.

Success Tip 3: Live with intention. At the end of each day, take a few minutes to reflect on the progress that you made today. Did it move you forward, or was it filled with activity that wasn’t related to your vision? Resolve to be intentional in your actions to make progress on your vision. What action will you take tomorrow?

The world is noisy, the unexpected happens, distractions arise, our innate desire for comfort tugs at us, and we lose focus on the things that we know we should do. That’s why to increase your odds of success, one of the most powerful things you can do is to create, and work from, a written plan.

Many 12 week efforts are comprised of two or three goals. For example, you might have a 12 week goal to lose 10 pounds and another goal to generate $105,000 in new business. Each of these goals then becomes a planning target for which you need to write tactics. Tactics for the weight goal are specific actions you must take to achieve your desired weight.

If you are working to lose weight, your tactics might include limit calorie intake to 1,200 per day and do 20 minutes of cardio three times per week. Note that these tactics start with a verb, and are complete sentences. The way that you write your goals and tactics matters. Your income goal of $105,000 would have a separate set of tactics.

Criteria 1: Make them specific and measurable. For each goal and/or tactic, be sure to quantify and qualify what success looks like.

Criteria 2: State them positively. Focus on what you want to happen that is positive.

Criteria 3: Ensure they are a realistic stretch. If you can accomplish the goal without doing anything differently, then you probably need to stretch more. If it is absolutely impossible, then factor it back a little.

Effective planning absolutely begins with a well-written, specific, and measureable 12 week goal—a goal that you own, that, if you hit it, creates meaningful benefits for you—a goal that makes a difference.

The best 12 week goals are realistic but enough of a stretch that they will call on you to deliver your very best. Why is your 12 week goal important to you? If you hit it, what will be different?

it’s time to write your first 12 week plan. The plan is the roadmap needed to reach your 12 week goals. The best plans are focused on one or two things that you want to make progress on in the next 12 weeks. The fewer goals and weekly actions there are, the easier the plan will be to execute.

Don’t overanalyze the content of your plan. Don’t be concerned that your plan isn’t perfect—there are no perfect plans. Once you have a good plan, your execution of the tactics will help you to learn what works best so you can refine your plan from there.

To get started, write your first 12 week goal as Goal 1. Write each additional goal separately. You may find that you have just one goal; that’s fine. Next, for each of your goals, define the highest-priority daily and weekly actions that you must take to reach that goal. In order to do this it might be helpful to brainstorm on a separate sheet of paper all the things you could do and then select the ones that will have the greatest impact. Some actions may be repeating (e.g., “work out each day”), while other actions will happen only once in the 12 weeks (e.g.,“join a health club”).

Finally, specify in the “Week Due” column the week (1 through 12) in which you intend to execute each action.

Before you put your plan down, ask yourself these questions: What actions will you struggle with?

What will you do to overcome those struggles?

Actions make all the difference in a plan. You can’t act on the objectives or goals that make up a typical 12 month plan, but you can execute the actions that make up a 12 week plan.

If you take time to plan before engaging with a complex task, you reduce the overall time required to complete the task by as much as 20 percent.

There are two last bits of advice when planning for teams: First, don’t overestimate the capacity of your team. The best team plans are succinct and contain the minimal amount of activity to reach the team goal—no more.

Pitfall 1: Your 12 week plan does not align with your long-term vision. It is important that your 12 week goals and your plan are aligned with, and an extension of, your longer-term vision.

Pitfall 2: You aren’t staying focused Focus is critical. If you establish too many goals, you end up with too many priorities and too many tactics to effectively execute. Everything cannot be a priority.

Pitfall 3: You don’t make the tough choices. For each goal, it’s not uncommon to identify 8, 10, or more tactics (actions) you could take to move the ball down the field. In most cases, implementing every tactic you can think of is not necessary and, in fact, can be a hindrance.

The 12 Week Year starts with a vision, and from that vision, you establish a set of 12 week goals. Based on those goals you develop a 12 week plan. Then comes process control.

Process control is a set of tools and events that help you work your plan, even when you get hit in the mouth.

The weekly plan is a powerful tool that translates the 12 week plan into daily and weekly action.

the weekly plan is populated with the tactics from the 12 week plan that are due that particular week. This process ensures that the weekly plan contains only those actions that are strategic and critical in nature. Because the weekly plan is driven by the 12 week plan, which is connected to your long-term vision, you can be confident that the actions it contains are, by default, the most important actions of the week.

George Shinn, the owner of the Charlotte Hornets basketball team, once said: “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.”

if you are implementing change, don’t go it alone. Your chances of success are seven times greater if you employ peer support.

Weekly Accountability Meeting Agenda I. Individual Report Out: Each member states how they are tracking against their goals and how well they executed. Here are four areas to focus on: a. Your results for the 12 Week Year to date. b. Your weekly execution score. c. Intentions for the coming week. d. Feedback and suggestions from the group. II. Successful Techniques: As a group, discuss what’s been working well and how to incorporate these techniques into one another’s plan. III. Encouragement.

The only way you will reach your 12 week goals is by taking action on your plan each day. The weekly plan and the WAM are two steps in a three step process called the weekly routine. These easy-to-follow steps will ensure that you execute each week and accomplish your goals.

The weekly routine consists of three simple, yet powerful steps: 1. Score your week 2. Plan your week 3. Participate in a WAM

In our experience, you are 60 to 80 percent more likely to execute a written weekly plan than a plan that is in your head.