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THE BIG IDEAS The 4 Disciplines of Execution

The 4DX
Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals
1 + 2 + 3 + 4. BY CHRIS MCCHESNEY, SEAN COVEY, JIM HULING · FREE PRESS © 2012 · 352 PAGES

The Whirlwind
Focus on your WIG first.

Discipline #1
Your Wildly Important Goal. FOCUS! “There are two principle things a leader can influence when it comes to producing
results: your strategy (or plan) and your ability to execute that strategy.
Lag vs. Lead Measures
Need both. Focus on Lead.
Stop for a moment and ask yourself this question: Which of these do leaders
What’s the Score? struggle with more? Is it creating a strategy, or executing the strategy? Every time
Want intensity? Keep score!
we post this question to leaders anywhere in the world, their answer is immediate:
The Magnificently Trivial ‘Execution!’
I don’t care about it.
Now, ask yourself a second question: If you have an MBA or have taken business
classes, what did you study more—execution or strategy?

When we ask leaders this question, the response, once again, is immediate,
‘Strategy!’ It’s perhaps not surprising that the area with which leaders struggle
most is also the one in which they have the least education.

After working with thousands of leaders and teams in every kind of industry, and
in schools and government agencies worldwide, this is what we have learned: once
you’ve decided what to do, your biggest challenge is in getting people to execute it
at the level of excellence you need. …

The book you are reading represents the most actionable and impactful insights
from all that we’ve learned. In it, you will discover a set of disciplines that have
been embraced by thousands of leaders and hundreds of thousands of front-line
“We believe all leaders facing workers, enabling them to produce extraordinary results.”
this challenge should have
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling from The 4 Disciplines of Execution
this quote prominently
displayed in their offices: The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

“There will always be more I’ve planned to read this book since Cal Newport referenced it in Deep Work. I finally did so in
good ideas than there is preparation to teach Productivity 101. It’s fantastic.
capacity to execute.”
If you’re a business leader or entrepreneur I think you’ll particularly enjoy it. The basic idea:
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim It’s *all* about execution. Specifically, it’s all about what the authors call the “4 Disciplines” of
Huling execution. Emphasis on “discipline.” They’re not easy.

The book is a product of the geniuses at FranklinCovey who have been working for decades on
optimizing performance at both an individual and organizational level. (FranklinCovey was
cofounded by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of his sons,
Sean Covey, is a coauthor.)

We’re going to focus on the high-level ideas and, as always, see if we can find ways to apply them
to our personal lives. Get the book (here) for more details.

I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas so let’s jump straight in!

1 PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution

 THE 4 DISCIPLINES OF EXECUTION
“W. Edwards Deming, the “Although the disciplines may seem simple at first glance, they are not simplistic. They will

management and quality guru,

profoundly change the way you approach your goals. Once you adopt them, you will never lead
in the same way again, whether you are a project coordinator, lead a small sales team, or run a
said it best when he told
Fortune 500 company. We believe they represent a major breakthrough in how to move teams
executives that managing
and organizations forward.
a company by looking at
financial data (lag measures) Here’s a quick overview of the 4 Disciplines.
is the equivalent of ‘driving a Discipline 1. Focus on the Wildly Important. Basically, the more you try to do, the less
car by looking in the rearview you actually accomplish. This is a stark, inescapable principle that we all live with. ...
mirror.’”
Discipline 2. Act on Lead Measures. This is the discipline of leverage. It’s based on the
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim simple principle that not all actions are created equal. Some actions have more impact that
Huling
others when reaching for a goal. And it is those you want to identify and act on if you want to
reach your goal. ...

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scorecard. People play differently when they are keeping
score. If you doubt this, watch any group of teenagers playing basketball and see how the game
changes the minute scorekeeping begins. ...

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability. Discipline 4 is where execution really

happens. The first three disciplines set up the game, but until you apply Discipline 4, your team
isn’t in the game.”

The 4 disciplines. Let’s take a quick look:

Discipline #1. We need to focus on our WILDLY IMPORTANT GOAL.

The 4DX guys call this your WIG.

Here’s the passage from Cal Newport’s Deep Work that made me buy the book: “As the authors
of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, ‘The more you try to do, the less you actually
accomplish.’ They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of ‘wildly
important goals.’ This simplicity will help focus an organization’s energy to a sufficient
intensity to ignite real results.

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small
number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation
to ‘spend more time working deeply’ doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. In a 2014 column
titled, ‘The Art of Focus,’ David Brooks endorsed this approach of letting ambitious goals drive
focused behavior, explaining: ‘If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to
the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasborg; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject
that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.’”

So... Step 1. What’s WILDLY Important to you? Like jumbo, really (!) important?

We need to start here. Say YES to it. Then say NO to all the distractions.

(btw: Sean Covey’s dad Stephen puts it this way in The 7 Habits: “You have to decide what your
highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say
‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The
enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good.’”)

Discipline #2. We need to “Act on lead measures.” Lead measures? Yah. Lead measures. We’ll
talk more about it in a moment but for now, know this: Your Wildly Important Goal is a “lag”
measure. It lags behind other things you do. It’s the RESULT of doing a bunch of things right.
Your “lead” measure is the #1 thing you need to actually do to CREATE that result you want.

2 PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution

 Most people create a goal (or lag measure) and then spend all their time looking at their stats
to see if they hit it. The best executers, however, create their WIG then spend all their time
measuring whether or not they’re crushing the LEAD measure stuff that will make the result a
more likely byproduct.

So... What’s your Wildly Important Goal? What’s the #1 thing you need to do to hit it?

That leads us to Discipline #3: We need to “Keep a compelling scorecard” of our lead measure.
We need to have a fun, compelling way to know, at a glance, whether or not we’re on track.

Then we have Discipline #4: We need to “Create a cadence of accountability.” In other words, we
need to make sure we’re regularly checking in on how we’re doing with the whole process. We
can’t set the system up and then walk away. The system REQUIRES us to stay on top of it. We
need to be accountable to the lead measures if we want to a) enjoy the process and b) ensure a
strong likelihood of high fiving ourselves as we achieve our WIG lag measure.

That’s the 4DX in a nutshell. Now, let’s take a peek at what gets in the way!

THE WHIRLWIND
“The 4 Disciplines of “The real enemy of execution is your day job! We call it the whirlwind. It’s the massive amount of
Execution aren’t designed for energy that’s necessary just to keep your operation going on a day-to-day basis; and, ironically,
managing your whirlwind. The it’s also the thing that makes it so hard to execute anything new. The whirlwind robs from you
4 Disciplines are rules for the focus required to move your team forward.
executing your most critical Leaders seldom differentiate between the whirlwind and strategic goals because both are
strategy in the midst of the necessary to the survival of the organization. However, they are clearly different, and more
whirlwind.” important, they compete relentlessly for time, resources, energy, and attention. We don’t have to
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim tell you which will usually win this fight.
Huling
The whirlwind is urgent and it acts on you and everyone working for you every minute of every
day. The goals you’ve set for moving forward are important, but when urgency and importance
clash, urgency will win every time. Once you become aware of this struggle, you will see it
playing out everywhere, in any team that is trying to execute something new.”

Meet: The Whirlwind. You know, your life. (Hah.)

There will ALWAYS (!) be a ton of urgent things pressing on us for our attention. We’ve gotta
know that. And, then we need to make sure we prioritize the truly important things that will help
us accomplish our most important goals.

The most powerful way I know how to do this is to make sure that I’m CREATIVE before I’m
REACTIVE. As I’ve said many times, same letters. Very different outcomes.

In this case, from my perspective, that means prioritizing your Wildly Important Goal work
*before* the whirlwind stuff. When? Every single day.

So... Quick questions.

#1: What’s your Wildly Important Goal? (Note: If you have a tough time answering that
question, then you might want to check out Purpose 101 + Goals 101 and make *discovering*
your WIG your #1 WIG! And, remember, it’s hard work to get clarity.)

This is my Wildly Important Goal: __________________________________.

#2: Have you hit your 451/212 degrees of activation energy on it? Yes _____ | No ______

If yes, awesome. If not, turn up the heat or find a goal that WOOPs you up.

Now... WHEN will you work on your Wildly Important Goal? Before or after you step into the
whirlwind? Before _______ | After _______

PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution 3

 Let’s take the time to step back and create our Masterpiece Days such that we’re doing the most
important stuff *before* we get sucked into the vortex of the whirlwind!!

But only if we *really* want to achieve our WIG. :)

DISCIPLINE #1: FOCUS ON WHAT’S WILDLY IMPORTANT

“The first discipline is to focus your finest efforts on the one or two goals that will make all the
“Steve Jobs of Apple had a difference, instead of giving mediocre effort to dozens of goals. Execution starts with focus.
big company to run, and he Without it, the other three disciplines won’t be able to help you. ...
could have proudly brought
Simply put, Discipline 1 is about applying more energy against fewer goals because, when it
many more products to
comes to setting goals, the law of diminishing returns is as real as the law of gravity.”
market than he did; but
he chose to focus on a We now know that it all starts with our Wildly Important Goals. The authors have a number of
rules for good WIGs. One of the most important? We need to FOCUS.
handful of ‘wildly important’
products. His focus was We’re not talking about focusing on 10 or 20 super important goals. Or 5 or 10. Or even 3 to 5.
legendary. And so were his 1 to 2 MAX.
results.”
I recently had a strategy chat with one of my friends and mentors (and investors) who happens
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim to be one of the world’s leading venture capitalists. His name is Matt McCall. His license plate
Huling says “KARMA.” We were talking about Optimize and some great opportunities.

Note: I’m looking at my page of notes that I keep in the front of my journal as a constant
reminder as I type this.

Matt told me that every great business must know its “wheelhouse.” It needs to know what it can
be *really* great at. He tells his entrepreneurs and CEOs to keep the moving pieces as simple as
possible and that most companies make the big mistake of biting off more than they can chew.

Then he dropped this wisdom bomb on me:

He said that a company has about an 80% chance of success in doing any one thing.

If they add a second thing, their likelihood of success becomes 80% x 80%. (For non-math
majors, we just went from an 80% chance of success to a 64% chance.)

Add a third thing? We’re at 80% x 80% x 80%. Just over 50%. Not good.

Moral of story? We want to FOCUS. On our wheelhouse. That thing that we love to do that we
can be great at and that the world needs (/is willing to pay for). As Matt says, “We do THIS over
and over and over again.” We say YES! to that WIG. And NO to everything else. Easier said than
done, of course. But let’s remember our 80%s.

P.S. The authors use Steve Jobs and his legendary focus as an example in this chapter. Jobs once
said, “We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge
of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of
things we focus on very small in number so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones
we do choose. The table each of you is sitting at today, you could probably put every product
on it that Apple makes, yet Apple’s revenue last year was $40 billion.”

LAG VS. LEAD MEASURES

“Let’s drill down into the distinction between lag and lead measures. A lag measure is the
measurement of a result you are trying to achieve. We call them lag measures because by the
time you get the data the result has already happened; they are always lagging. The formula
from X to Y by when in a WIG gives us a lag measure, but WIGs are not the only lag measures in
your world. The whirlwind is full of lag measures such as revenue, accounts payable, inventory
numbers, hospitalization rates, asset utilization, and so forth.

4 PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution

 Lead measures are different; they foretell the result. They have two primary characteristics.
“Great teams invest their
First, a lead measure is predictive, meaning that if the lead measure changes, you can predict
best efforts in those few
that the lag measure also will change. Second, a lead measure is influenceable; it can be directly
activities that have the most
influenced by the team. That is, the team can make a lead measure happen without a significant
impact on the WIGs: the
dependence on another team.”
lead measures. This insight is
Lag vs. Lead. We need both measures. And... We need to focus on the lead measure.
so crucial and so distinctive,
yet so little understood that Two things that make the lead measure so important: 1. It’s PREDICTIVE. 2. It’s
we call it the secret of INFLUENCEABLE. You do X and Y is likely to happen. And, you can actually *do* X—it’s within
excellence in execution.” your control!

~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim So... What’s your Lag measure of your Wildly Important Goal? And, what’s your Lead?
Huling
Note: It’s supposed to be challenging. No pressure, no diamonds. If your brain doesn’t hurt
figuring that out, you’re doing something wrong. (Hah!)

P.S. For those curious souls, my/our big picture Wildly Important Goal with Optimize is 1m. 1
million people Optimizing with us (biz-wise: at $10/mo) so we can change the world together. As
I create this Note in October of 2017, we’ve crossed the 10,000 member mark. Our next domino:
100,000. In proper WIG format: “We will go from 10,000 to 100,000 members by Jan 1, 2020.”

The lead measure? I’m currently having fun with this: “1 + 2 + 3.” We share 1 piece of free
content daily and 2 new PhilosophersNotes per week as I put in 3 Deep Work sessions per day.
1 + 2 + 3 = 100k = dominoes to 1m = super fun. :)

WHAT’S THE SCORE?

“The third discipline is to make sure everyone knows the score at all times, so that they can tell
whether or not they are winning. This is the discipline of engagement.

Remember, people play differently when they are keeping score. The difference in performance
between a team that simply understands their lead and lag measures as a concept, and a team
that actually knows their score, is remarkable. If the lead and lag measures are not captured
on a visual scoreboard and updated regularly, they will disappear into the distraction of the
whiteboard. Simply put, people disengage when they don’t know the score. When they can see at
“When 4DX becomes habitual,
a glance whether or not they are winning they become profoundly engaged.”
you can expect not only
Remember: People play differently when they’re keeping score.
to reach the goal but also
to see a permanent rise in The authors tell us to imagine Serena and Venus Williams playing tennis. In one scenario,
the level of your team’s they’re just hitting the ball back and forth. In the other, they’re keeping score. Which one do you
performance. The ultimate think generates a higher level of intensity? Another metaphor: Imagine yourself bowling into a
aim of 4DX is not just to curtain so you can’t see how you did. How fun would that be?
get results, but to create Keep score. Dial up your intensity.
a culture of excellent
P.S. Science agrees: What you measure improves. Remember our magical pedometer? Simply
execution.”
having a pedometer increased the number of steps people took by a mile.
~ Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim
Huling P.P.S. In Finding Your Zone, Michael Lardon echoes this wisdom. He tells his pro golfers to
have two score cards: One for the lag measure (their actual score) and one for the lead measure
(whether or not they followed their pre-shot routine that LEADS to a great score!).

I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MAGNIFICENTLY TRIVIAL

“Envision for yourself the day you report the achievement of your wildly important goal to your
own leaders. What would that day be like for your team? For you?

Now, imagine that day never comes. Imagine you forget everything you’ve read in this book.

PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution 5

 Consider spending the future in the midst of a relentless whirlwind where everything is always
urgent and the really important priorities are forever postponed.
“Goals cannot sound noble
The great management scientist Peter Drucker observed, ‘I’ve seen a great many people who
but vague. Targets cannot
are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of
be so blurry they can’t be
achievement on trivial matters.’
hit. Your direction has to be
But you don’t want to be magnificently trivial. You want to make a high-level, high-impact
so vivid that if you randomly
contribution. The 4 Disciplines of Execution can take you there.”
woke one of your employees
in the middle of the night “...you don’t want to be magnificently trivial.” <— Right?
and asked him ‘Where are we Recall Ryan Holiday’s epic passage from The Daily Stoic in which he tells us we’d be wise to say
going?’ he could still answer “I don’t care” to all the trivial stuff most people think they need to be masters of. Take a sword to
in a half-asleep stupor.” the trivial. Say it with me now: “I don’t care.”
~ Jack Welch Then we have Peter Drucker who spent decades studying human behavior within organizations.
Observing: “I’ve seen a great many people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant
things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.”

Yikes. Time for an inventory: What unimportant things need to go from your life?

Let’s nudge them out with a deep, courageous YES!!! to the Wildly Important Goals that make
our souls ache with a terrifying longing.

And, let’s demonstrate that YES! with consistent, effective action on the things that truly matter.
+1 +1 +1 all the way to the most wild and important goal: Actualizing our potential in service to
the world.

Brian Johnson

If you liked this Note, About the Authors of “The 4 Disciplines of Execution”
you’ll probably like… CHRIS MCCHESNEY, SEAN COVEY, JIM HULING

The Progress Principle

Chris is the Global Practice Leader of Execution for FranklinCovey and one of the
Extreme Ownership developers of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Connect: chrismcchesney4dx.com.
Primary Greatness Sean Covey is an author, motivational speaker, and publishing executive
The 7 Habits providing business leadership and time management educational tools for
organizations and individuals. Connect: seancovey.com.
The 80/20 Principle
Deep Work Jim Huling is co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. As FranklinCovey’s
Global Managing Consultant, he is responsible for the 4 Disciplines methodology
and the quality of delivery worldwide. Connect: jimhuling.com.

About the Author of This Note

BRIAN JOHNSON

Brian Johnson loves helping people optimize their lives as he studies, embodies
and teaches the fundamentals of optimal living—integrating ancient wisdom
+ modern science + common sense + virtue + mastery + fun. Learn more and
optimize your life at optimize.me.

6 PhilosophersNotes | The 4 Disciplines of Execution