Lessons - How to Execute When Everything Feels Urgent | Chris McChesney - Author of 4 Disciplines of Execution (#1 WSJ Bestseller)

In this lessons episode, discover how the four disciplines of execution help leaders turn strategy into action and focus on what truly drives results. Learn how to overcome uncertainty and urgency that block progress, understand why clarity and leverage determine successful outcomes, and explore how accountability and focus sustain long-term performance in any organization. So let's let's let's queue up the four disciplines and what they're actually so four disciplines are four disciplines that are focused on executing executing in a business context in a leadership context. This is obviously what the you know this is the book that you just re-released. Today actually today we're recording it on Tuesday April 20th yeah so congratulations that's exciting it's very exciting so actually so what's the what's the re-release about like if people have already checked out this book what is the re-release and then I actually want to go into some of the more tactical stuff but I'm just curious what's the yeah so the if you're familiar with the four disciplines the the re-release about 30% new content really a lot of focus I'm where to use this approach and where not to use this approach this is not you know vitamin C this is not good for what ails you this is heavy medicine right and and where do leaders apply these disciplines and where not to how do leaders of leaders we go into much more detail on how organizational leaders apply this we do a lot with leaders that are finding themselves managing projects and they're not project managers how do you apply the disciplines to a project go instead of a performance type goal and then finally sustainability a lot of organizations have been at this for almost a decade how do you keep it fresh how do you keep it alive so those are kind of I guess the headlines or the highlights of how of what's new in the second edition and there are there's valid points because I can I can tell you from personal experience the the leaders of leaders point is something that nobody really nobody learns in school it's one of the most difficult things to figure out and then also just the project management piece when again another leader of leaders things when you're managing tasks that if you're in sales and you love selling and you move into sales manager and you move into director sales and you move into VP sales well now you have to manage projects and now and actually that's one of the reasons why some people don't like those executive roles because there's a lot of leaders of leadership type requirements and there's a lot of project management type requirements that is so far from the actual act right yep anyways good good advice I'm glad you said that about leaders of leaders I'm glad that because the one of the co-authors of the book Jim Hueeling and I are actually starting right now we had the same thought you did we're starting right now another work on leading leaders and we don't know if that's the name of the book it's a damn good name there's a whole chapter on this and we we we had to cut this chapter short we had so much on this topic and and we we had to say it's got we said the same thing you did there's not a lot out there there's a lot on leadership in a general sense but in terms of the specific dynamics of when you're a leader and you have to lead another leader that is not at least at least we've not seen a great deal on those unique dynamics so that is something that we're looking at right now it's a good it's a good topic and I know that the audience here some of them everybody here is career focused trying to build something themselves so I would just say if you aren't leading leaders right now regardless of whether or not you're starting a side hustle building something you're an entrepreneur and you want to build something in an organization there will be a point where this will be applicable in your career I mean I'd be today but figure it out so you don't have to go through hell and trial by fire when you're actually living it anyway so let's yeah this will be the reward of success exactly we will be leading leaders that's right that's exactly yeah okay so we're trying to remove ambiguity we're trying to take on tasks that ambiguity so that everything's clear everything is comforting we see the end result we see the vision so first of all how do we do that and then how do we apply say these four principles to executing when we have that clear vision so first how do we get rid of that ambiguity yeah so let's do this let's let's put up sort of two obstacles and then let's maybe walk through the disciplines so the one obstacle is it's not that people we think this but it's not that people necessarily resist change we think people resist change because it looks like they're resisting change a lot what they resist is uncertainty people initiate change quite a bit so it's it's really unfair to say that it's a human dynamic to resist change what people resist is the uncertainty that often comes with change okay so if you said uncertainty is sort of one issue and then the the here's the second issue that gets in the way of execution and it's it's urgency it took us a long time to sort of see this this was hiding in plain sight the any goal that you're trying to achieve any strategic priority anything that's really important will always compete with the day job and we've given the day job a nickname called the whirlwind right so this day job this whirlwind always feels urgent immediate oh I've got to get back to so-and-so oh I promised I might have that done oh I've got to do this oh I've still got seven unanswered emails oh oh oh right and so we're working all day long and you can live in the whirlwind and not move on anything strategic and and here's the other problem in the moment when a human being is confronted with a choice between something that's happening right now or spending energy on something far more important but less urgent the human default does not go to importance the human default goes to urgency this is the great barrier to strategic execution we're not wired for we are wired for immediacy so you think about those two factors this this resistance to uncertainty and this this whirlwind of urgency that we have to execute through so if you just think of those two things and then the what are the what are the four disciplines all right well the first one is called discipline ones called focus on the wildly important and it's a decision that a that a leader or an entrepreneur or a professional person makes when they say I'm going to give something disproportionate energy I'm not gonna ignore doesn't mean I got to ignore everything else everything else can go into whirlwind but something's going to get disproportionate energy and I'm gonna and I'm and not only am I gonna narrow the focus but I'm gonna it's a little bit like focusing a camera I'm gonna bring it into focus I'm gonna give it a starting line I'm gonna give it a finish line I'm gonna give it a deadline and there's a whole science around how you do that in organizational setting and how you do that between levels but that's what the first discipline is all about it the first discipline is all about targeting getting really clear on well let me let me give you a quote um I really like this this this was something that was said to us 20 years ago by the gentleman who's now the president of Chick-fil-A he was VP of operations at the time his name is Tim Tisopolis and he said when I meet with a leader he's got one of the yet one of the planets really good operators right he said when I meet with a leader the first thing I want to know where is that leader putting disproportionate focus this where are they spending like I don't want to know your seven priorities I want to know number one I want to know what's your big bet what you play right now otherwise I know if they don't have that they're on the defensive they're just they're just trying to put out fires right they'll put out fires they just want to get through the week right and he says it really helps me know where a leader's head is and and I think that little statement started to influence the way we use the discipline so so I got discipline one is about what I'm going after discipline two is called act on the lead measures so if discipline one is about the principle of focus discipline two is the principle of leverage it basically says look I'm just I've just identified something that by definition I can't move otherwise I wouldn't have identified I've just deliberately picked this really important thing that's really hard and so if you think about a rock that's too heavy to move yeah and then you picture a lever if you get a full chrome you get a lever under there right and you know what are the characteristics of a lever well a lever unlike the rock you can move it the lever is influenceable and when the lever moves the rock moves so the lever is predictive and so for 20 years we have been our had our heads into this idea of where's the leverage okay so the classic example that everybody gets his weight loss so people know okay if losing weight is the heavy rock I've just not been able to accomplish right diet and exercise really are the lever right I could act I don't always act on them but I can right and they're predictive if I stay with it it works right we don't believe it work but it works right so so it's predictive and influenceable and what we found is that in every field of human endeavor if you can get the targets low enough down to where the work is happening you can find leverage points you can find what we call lead measures now so a lead measure predictive and influenceables not the same as a predictive indicator just one little distinction on this if I was trying to grow corn right and crop production was my wildly important goal that's what we call the targets in discipline one we call them wigs or wildly important goals my wildly important goal or my lag measure right what's crop growth like similar to weight loss a predictive indicator of crop growth would be rainfall right we have we have a lot of rainfall we're gonna have a good crop growth okay well you can't control it okay I'm very good it's got right it's predicted but it ain't influenceable right lead measures are not predictive indicators lead measures are true leverage they're influenceable and they're predictive all right so so getting so you might have an organization with eight nine different teams each team we we really limit you to one wildly important goal per team per workgroup at a time this is what we found people can handle the day job plus one right so they got one wig that team has been very involved in creating the lead measures discipline three now it's called um keep a compelling scoreboard and it's really about for me it's about throwing the game on switch like that's that to me that's a that's a tangible it's a binary switch when someone goes all right it's live game on right and I engage and the hypothesis that you've created a discipline one and discipline two doesn't put it into motion but the minute you go game on and for us that's been a scoreboard so we we have an app 4dx os that we've got over a half a million people on right now utilizing and in very simple terms it's not like it's not like a business scoreboard it's not like a spreadsheet it's not like well like a coach we think of it this way it's not a coach is scoreboard you you need those you have those this is a players scoreboard okay so if you think about the scoreboard at any athletic event it's much more like that than it is the spreadsheet they hand the coach at half time so that's discipline three does the team can we take what we did in disciplines one and two and can we make it go game on and the discipline four is create a cadence of accountability and that is every week right every team that owns a scoreboard each individual making commitments and then reporting the next week like in addition to the 100 things I got to do this week what's the one or two things that are going to ensure we do the lead measures like if my lead measures are diet and exercise right what would a commitment be will do diet and exercise no no no no we know that my commitment might be it's going to rain next week so I'm going to get that gym membership because I hate running in the rain or I'm going to go to Whole Foods because I've got these recipes but I don't have the ingredients right and I've got to right I've got to right want to make sure that I'm not eating junk and that I'm hitting that calorie lead measure so discipline one get the focus discipline two get the leverage discipline three game on and then discipline four if you've ever heard the adage force against leverage that's right that's applying that force so what we found is by doing that we're able to drive activities into an otherwise schedule of urgency and do it in a way that it doesn't feel overwhelming to people where they're like I don't even know where to start you