The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals Hardcover – April 24, 2012

I bought and read The 4 Disciplines of Execution in January of 2017 because Cal Newton gave it high praise in his book, Deep Work. At first glance, I thought it was some of the same old, same old. I waited more than six months before writing my review because I wanted to see if what was in the book really worked. It does, even though, at first glance it looks like old wine between new covers.What’s in The BookThe authors identify four core disciplines that can combine to make any individual or team more effective. The disciplines are focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability. Here’s a little bit more about each one of them and why my initial impression was that there wasn’t much new in this book.Discipline 1 is about focusing on wildly important goals. Well, of course. People who use goals to guide their behavior and practice some form of essentialism and zero in on the most important goals certainly will do better. It didn’t seem like there was much new here.Discipline 2 is to leverage your lead measures. I first learned about the power of lead measures working with my friend Stephen Lynch on his book, Business Execution for RESULTS. Stephen demonstrated the power of lead measures (the acts you do to drive results) and how concentrating on them is more likely to make your results come out right. It seemed like I knew that, so what could be new here?Discipline 3 is boost engagement by having employees keep score. This one may not be obvious to everyone, but I’ve been keeping score in one form or another for half a century. I track my daily work and results. I attach them to a simple score sheet. So, I figured I had this one. There was a new wrinkle, though, and that was the purpose of a visual scoreboard and how it’s a great way to keep track of how you’re doing.Discipline 4 is accountability. Well, of course. If you’re leading a team, you must hold people accountable for their behavior and their results. If you’re tracking things for yourself, you should hold yourself accountable and not fudge. That seemed obvious, too.If you looked at the table of contents for the book or poked around a bit inside it, you may have come to the same conclusion I did and you and I would both be right. There’s not much new here if all you consider are the individual disciplines. Concentrating on your most important goals will help you improve your performance. Identifying and tracking your lead measures will definitely improve your performance. And, it’s always necessary to hold people accountable for their behavior and their performance. So, what’s different?The System’s the ThingIf all this book was a description of the disciplines, it wouldn’t be much. But the book is about how to use those four disciplines as a system. When you use them together, you get a positive synergy. Any one of the four will improve your results. Using the four all together will improve your results dramatically.My Proof Was in the TryingWhen I read the book, I was impressed, but I wasn’t ready to give it a great review until I figured out if it worked. I knew the parts worked, it was the system I wasn’t sure of.I had to make some adjustments in the way that I worked and the way that I tracked my performance based on what I read in The Four Disciplines of Execution. When I did that, two things happened. First, my overall results improved. Second, the time I was spending to get those results dropped. This stuff works.How the Book Helps YouThe writing in this book is clear and the examples are good, but there’s one “design feature” that I really liked. This book is divided into two parts. The first part identifies and explains the four disciplines and the basic system. The second part is about how to put the system into action. This helped me and it would have helped me even more if I had a team that I was going to apply this with.Bottom LineThe material in this book can make a difference in your performance, your team’s performance, and your overall quality of work life. But beware: you’ve got to do the work and it won’t be easy.The hard part isn’t understanding the concepts. The hard part is breaking some habits and changing some procedures and maintaining energy while you work through those changes. If you’re not willing to do that, don’t buy the book.The second important point is that the book is about a system. You can adopt any one of the four disciplines, or improve the way you handle each one, but to get the best results, you’ve got to use them all in a coordinated way. If you’re not willing to do that, don’t buy the book.One more thing. This book is not about principles or secrets or magic of any kind. It’s about disciplines. That’s good because it means that people like you and like me can make it work. It will take work and, well, discipline, but we can make it work.If you are willing to do the work and take the time and make the changes, The Four Disciplines of Execution is a book that will help you make a dramatic improvement in your performance and your quality of work life.

This book is destined to be a classic in the area of goal achievement. I was familiar with the Covey organization having worked for a major corporation that taught the Covey "7 Habits" material. I also know that the Covey organization knows what they are talking about after refining their training methods from many years of experience consulting for corporations worldwide. I was further attracted to this book because of the cover that said, "achieving your wildly important goals". I liked that "wildly important".I was a little concerned because the book is clearly written for businesses and organizations and I was interested in achieving wildly important PERSONAL goals. As it turned out....no problem. The material is equally applicable to achieving personal goals as organizational goals. What I found myself doing was either mentally substituting 'me' or 'your' for "team". For instance in a sentence that said, "...until you apply Discipline 4, your team isn't in the game". I would just read or occasionally physically cross out "your team isn't" and insert..."you aren't" in the game. Then this powerful formula just as easily applies to personal goals. There is a chapter in the back of the book on using the 4 Disciplines for personal goals but you really don't need it after reading the book with a mindset focused on your own personal goal attainment.In one sense, "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" doesn't start out with anything startlingly new. In my words, know what you want, take actions, track your progress, and stay accountable. But don't let this fool you. McChesney, Covey, and Huling take their 4 Disciplines to levels you could hardly imagine and give you insights you have most likely never thought of, and they do it in an easy to read, very well organized but detailed manner. The book is very thorough. It even includes multiple barcode scanner links for more information. They also include many real world examples of their 4 Discipline method in action.I found "The 4 Disciplines" an exciting book to read...one where I could hardly wait to get finished so that I could start on my own WIG's. If you have a WIG (Wildly Important Goal), and I would hope everyone does, from making a major change in the organization to losing weight, then "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" will give you a path and amazing insights on how that wildly important goal can become a reality.

This is an exceptional book that can be best summarized in one sentence: "Start with the end in mind." The book addresses how to get a team to focus on ultimate goals and work backwards. As a strategy consultant, I definitely found the book to be a solid read because it takes away much of the daily minutiae that consultants and leaders often get tripped up by (what the authors term the "whirlwind").Positives:Although I already implement many of the methods outlined in the book in my work, I found that the book summarized the methods very succinctly. Of particular importance were the discussions on lead and lag measures (measures we want to ultimately change versus measures we have the power to directly influence), periodic reporting and limiting those meetings to short intervals, encouraging buy-in from employees, and allowing employees to see how their contributions are contributing to the overall goals of the organization.Negatives:My enthusiasm for the 4 disciplines content began to wane over time as the authors rehashed it over, and over, and over again. I found myself asking "didn't I read this point 3 times already?" I began to wonder if the book couldn't have been 1/2 the length. Overall, it wasn't extraordinarily frustrating, but I did find it very redundant.I purchased the Kindle version which is peppered with links to the 4DX paid-membership website. I recognize that FranklinCovey is a business, but as just an ebook reader I found this to be very distracting and self-promotional. I would have favored either the links to be removed or to receive a 1-month complimentary membership so that I could see what the links were referring to.

I got exactly what I purchased. Thank you

In mijn werk ben ik continue bezig met het behalen van targets en draagvlak creëren bij collega's. De principes uit dit boek vertellen hoe het behalen van beïnvloedbare subdoelen er uiteindelijk voor zorgen dat het grote doel ook gehaald wordt. Doelen behalen is een gedragsverandering van het team.

This book is really helpful for your team and for you.It's not about being productive.It's about become efficient.

I found 4DX very pragmatic and simple to implement concept ... and way more effective than Hoshin Kanri..

One of the most useful and practical books. Was a little sceptical when I bout it - turned out to be very helpful. Lot of examples and case studies on how this system works. Recommended for any manager.

I picked this book while listenting to this podcast - Bigger Pockets and I must thank the hosts Brandon Turner and David Greene for inviting the writer of this Book - Chris McChesney to the podcast. I dont remember ever making such comprehensive notes and then making a presentation and delivering it to my team. Concepts shared are so powerful and at the same time so simple to implement.Book focuses on simplifying some of the complexities which we all face in our daily jobs by getting too engrossed in urgent tasks that we loose sight of whats important. It shares ways on how to measure the changes by creating a cadence of accountabilityTopics covered are - 1. What are WIGs (Wildly Important Goals) and how to brain storm with teams to identify them, 2. What are Lead Measures and how developing those measures tells you if you likely to achieve your goals, 3. Keeping a compelling scorecard and how it shoukd be kept easy and simple to ensure its prepared and at the same time tells you in 5 sec whether you winning or loosing, 4. Creating a cadence of accountabilityTheir are ideation guides and do confirm checklists for each of the disciplines which ensure you are not derailed and at the same time not missing on required steps.A must for anyone who wants to lead successfully !