The 4 Disciplines of Execution: 4DX

The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney

I just finished listening to this book on my way to work this morning (thanks to Alex Barrouk for the recommendation). We are an EOS Traction shop and I found that many principles of the 4DX dovetailed nicely with Traction. My main takeaways are:

1. Most businesses have excellent strategy… and poor execution.
2. Scorecards matter. What gets measured, improves. These need to be updated weekly and have thoughtful, meaningful measurements that are created by those closest to the work being accomplished. These need to be visible to the team.
3. WIGs (Wildly Important Goals) will move the company ahead, if the team sets aside time (outside of the normal whirlwind) to work on the WIGs and most importantly, to hold each other accountable. Once a commitment is made, it needs to be followed up on.
4. The whirlwind (the daily work that all have inside of our companies) is real, can be overwhelming and must be set off to the side for dedicated periods of time as we work “on” the business (WIG sessions), versus working “in” the business (whirlwind work). A company’s ability to succeed is largely dependent upon their ability to subscribe to this belief.

I’d love to hear from anyone that has read this book and implemented it in their company. You can buy your copy of this book from Amazon here.

Wil Buchanan