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There is a near universal challenge in business. It’s this, strategies are less effort to create than the effort needed to execute them. The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) framework gives companies and teams a way of creating strategically aligned goals, PLUS a way to execute them.
99% of the time we have each quarter is usually spent on execution not goal planning so having a framework to guide execution has a huge impact.
4DX achieves performance gains by giving you the structure to focus on what matters most, based on having clarity on how success will be measured. It then gives you the cadence to keep your focus and momentum going on an ongoing basis.
We talk a lot about BAU take-over at ZOKRI, and the inevitability of it happening if you don’t have the systems, processes and cadence to keep that particular monster at bay. It really is the one of the biggest and most dangerous of the strategy killers.
You should therefore consider the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) a strategy and execution framework that can help you, and it should be considered alongside other frameworks like OKR, as it has many of the same ideas and principles embedded. We talk more about the differences between 4DX and OKR below.
The framework’s credentials come from its creators and the authors of the book – The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Like with OKR, it has its big logo users and many other smaller companies that you are less likely to hear about. In fact the authors say they have worked with 1500 companies on 4DX.
FranklinCovey is the consulting firm where 4DX was not only designed and developed, it is where it continues to be refined. Implementations of 4DX at Franklin Covey, include:
Chris is still on a mission: to help organizations get results through improved execution via consultancy and via keynotes and speaking engagements.
I’m the Managing Consultant for FranklinCovey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution.
As FranklinCovey’s Managing Consultant, Jim is responsible for the 4DX methodology and the quality of delivery worldwide.
Jim still regularly leads large-scale engagements, in addition to doing keynote speaking engagements.
What is 4DX?
The reason why 4DX works well and is effective is it has both structure and discipline build in by design in a non ambiguous way. This makes it easy to follow.
Let us look at each of these in turn.
Focus on the Wildly Important.
Like with OKR the company needs to create their Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) – ideally no more than three. These are your top priorities.
Once they are locked in they then need to be communicated with teams. Choose any more than three WIGs and the chances of achieving all of your goals becomes less likely.
Teams can then create their aligned WIGs. The rules / guidance on creating these WIGs are as follows:
There are 4 easy to follow steps to help you create focused goals. They are:
In teams and in cross-team groups, with the company WIGs in view, list all of the opportunities and challenges that need resolving and the goals you might consider and that addresses them. Good questions include:
For example, imagine an enterprise software company with a top level WIG of:
This was chosen because of its material impact on the sales funnel, both for new leads but also conversion rates.
Then imagine teams were asked to brainstorm and debate possible aligned WIGs like:
With the goals that would have the greatest impact at the top and least at the bottom, order your possibles by impact.
Does your WIG pass these criteria:
If you’re happy, commit and start to execute.
In ZOKRI you can manage the whole proposal, collaboration and sign-off process. Even editing the questions, guidance notes and commentary that goes with the process.
As a reminder, the company level WIGs that teams were asked to align with was:
This was chosen because of its material impact on the sales funnel, both for new leads but also conversion rates.
After listing possible WIGs, robust discussions and checks, the narrowed down and agreed WIGs for the example teams above were:
Each team agreed that these WIGs will not only support the company WIG but also aligned with each other.
Act on the Lead Measures.
Most leaders and managers are acutely aware of lagging measures or indicators that not only keep you in business, but make your company healthy. Examples of lagging measurements would be revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction or NPS.
Lagging measurements move slowly and what 4DX needs you and every team to do is consider what the lead measures are that drive these. Lead measures are the metrics that you can influence that will result in changes to these lagging indicators.
Through the lens of a Sales team that targets new revenue, this might be them target and track lead measures like:
So they might create an “Action” to increase the average daily calls made by the team from 50 to 150 calls a day.
Acting on lead measurements will not tell you whether you have hit your WIG, but they will predict that you will hit your WIG. The more you drive lead measures, the faster you will change your lagging measurements.
Through the lens of a customer team that targets revenue, retention and customer satisfaction this might track lead-measures like: time-to-value, product usage, reviews, case studies, QBRs completed, proactive customer spot-checks / check-ins.
There are 4 easy to follow steps to help you create leveraged goals. They are:
To narrow down to the best lead measures to act on you’re going to need to consider all of the possibles. The best way of doing this is to brainstorm them with your team. Don’t worry too much if you don’t track that measure now, you might be able to in the future and create a baseline from which you could set a target.
Considering all of the lead measures you proposed which would have the greatest impact on your company WIG?
Do your lead measurements pass these criteria:
If you’re happy, commit and start to execute.
ZOKRI is where you can list the actions and lead measures you’re committed to and then makes it easy to track progress.
You can also track lead measures as KPIs. KPIs can be live in or outside goals / WIGs, owned by an individual, be connected to teams, be tagged with Lead and Lagging labels, and be updated manually or via a tool integration or spreadsheet.
Every week you’re going to need to come up with 4DX commitments. This means that teams need to propose a few things from active work, the backlog of old ideas, or new ones. With the most important selection criteria being they will impact the lead measures.
Which of course means commitments are not a list of all of the things that are important. This is because not everything that is important in a week influences WIGs or Lead Measures. In fact, much of the important work that people do relates to business-as-usual jobs and everday business operations.
WIGs, Actions, and KPIs, and the weeks aheads commitments can be seen on every employee’s ZOKRI Home Page.
Keep a Compelling Scoreboard.
Teams should already be feeling engaged because not only have they created their WIG goals, they have been involved in creating their targeted lead measures. They should also be feeling a strong sense of goal ownership which is also critical. You know you need to keep the momentum going and make WIG goals and lead measure progress visible in an easy to understand format.
“People don’t try as hard if no one’s keeping score”
As with all disciplines of 4DX, ZOKRI makes this easy and has multi scorecard views to help with progress charts, target lines, RAG (Red, Amber, Green) alerting and more.
These scoreboards then need to be updated weekly. ZOKRI helps there with reminders, easy update workflows, alerts that ensure these updates happen and everyone knows the score.
If you don’t commit to keeping score and planning the week aheads commitments then the everyday will take over from the strategically important.
Create a cadence of accountability.
Regardless of the framework, achieving a cadence of where goals and progress are discussed in teams, plans made, and problems resolved need to happen, without any exceptions.
There is also some important psychology at play here. When people know the meetings are going to happen and progress will be discussed, they are more likely to work on goals and fend off other demands on their time.
The meetings need to be:
Good agendas include:
With ZOKRI you can schedule the meetings and everything you need will be on screen to run the meeting without ever needing to create a slide or report. ZOKRI will even mark attendances, allow you to take notes, assign actions and send a post meeting contact report.
Step #1: Set your top level company WIG using discipline 1
Step #2: Choose Team WIGs and Lead Measures using discipline 1 and 2.
Step #3: Ensure everyone is updating WIGs and Lead measures using discipline 3
Step #4: Start having your weekly meetings and never miss one using discipline 4
Step #5: At the end of the quarter, run a retrospective, grade success, capture learnings and start the cycle again.
You can see the similarity between 4DX and OKRs. In fact 4DX and SMART have lots of similarities as well. After all, they are all trying to achieve similar things. The key differences being 4DX and OKR is that with 4DX there is clear guidance on:
ZOKRI obviously supports both or lets you create your own hybrid with the best bits of both. What matters most is that you adopt the core principles contained in both.
The 10 common principles that both OKRs and 4DX implementations use.
Our advice is try one or both and see how you get on, but commit to being great at the 10 points above.
All of them are powerful, together they are rocketfuel.
ZOKRI allows companies and teams to not just use 4DX successfully, adapt it to work for them. With ZOKRI you get these benefits:
The 4DX goal cycles run way more smoothly.
Every step requires less time and team overhead.
You achieve much higher levels of engagement when compared to document and spreadsheet alternatives.
You reduce the time it takes to establish the behaviours and habits you want.
Performance across every team improves as do your lagging measures!