We live in a fast-paced, ever-changing world that is filled with many distractions. Our organizations—and the members of our teams—are faced with many competing priorities. How do we help our teams and organizations stay focused to achieve our very important strategic goals in the midst of the “urgent” day-to-day responsibilities?
Many organizations place their primary focus on creating a strategic plan. The high-level strategic plan helps set the direction for the organization. A company’s strategic objective may include goals for revenue growth, improved customer service, designing a new product, or moving into new geographical markets.
Common Challenges
But much of the important work comes after the plan is created. Bringing the plan to fruition to achieve the strategic goals requires focus, commitment, engagement, accountability, and regular review of progress. And in many cases, it requires people to change their behavior. As many leaders know, getting others to change their behavior can be very challenging—even changing our own behavior can be tough!
The challenges faced by Atrion, an IT services organization, while creating and implementing its strategic plans are common to many organizations.
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Too Many Great Ideas. Have you and your organization ever been faced with so many great ideas that it becomes confusing and overwhelming to decide where to start and how to prioritize? Have you ended the year with completing few, if any, of your objectives?
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Not Enough Communication. Are you communicating the organization’s strategic goals to all your team members, or just to the Senior Leaders? Are all leaders communicating the same message to each of their teams? Does everyone understand the reason and importance of the goals you’ve set, and the company vision? Does each person know how they can contribute in their role?
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Inconsistent Participation. Is there a compelling reason why team members should participate? Is participation consistent across the organization? Have the leaders helped the team members understand “what’s in it for me?” Is everyone accountable for their participation?
- Lack of Clarity on Metrics. Are your metrics clearly tracking progress? Are your dashboards or reports easy to read and understand at a quick glance? How do you adjust your behaviors and efforts if you’re not achieving the progress you need to meet your goals?
When I took on the role of director of corporate strategy execution, we were faced with these challenges. But we recognized the importance of adopting a formal, proven methodology.
The Solution: Four Disciplines of Execution
To address these challenges, we selected “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” (or ‘4DX’) based on the research and book of the same name by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. The four disciplines of execution that the authors outline—and we have used to successfully execute on our strategic plan are:
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Focus on the Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). Consider the “law of diminishing returns,” which says that if you try to focus on too many things at the same time, it generally dilutes the focus and effectiveness. Instead, choose two to three strategic goals. Make sure that these are the highest priority to help your organization or team achieve your vision.
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Act on the Lead Measures. How do you know which activities will help you and your team achieve success? If you wait until the game is over, it will be too late to adjust your strategy and plays if needed. The lead measures need to be activities that you and your team members can influence and be measured regularly. These measures will provide the visibility as to whether your actions are leading to the goal. And if they are not, it will allow you time to change direction. Another important key to success is to engage members at all levels of the organization. If team members feel their role and participation is valued, and are supporting one another, they’re helping to set the team up for success.
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Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. Have you noticed that your team’s efforts and participation are usually much higher when they’re keeping score, and they can easily track their progress? The healthy competition is a great motivator for each team to do their best. And this visibility also allows you to recognize the accomplishments of the teams, or help coach them to get back on track to achieving their goals.
- Create a Cadence of Accountability. What happens when goals are set but there isn’t a consistent, formal process for follow-through and accountability? It becomes very easy for strategic initiatives to be side-lined or lost in the midst of all the other competing priorities. It’s critical for the team to set a regular cadence for their meetings, to make weekly commitments for the actions they’ll take to help “move the ball down the field,” and for the team members to have shared accountability to help achieve their success.
We have used these four disciplines to help us achieve organization-wide strategic success of exceeding our company’s revenue goals, profitability and client satisfaction. We have definitely found that this approach helps to bring the focus, discipline, participation, and accountability to create a winnable game.
