161 - Book | 4 Disciplines of Execution
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Show Notes:
Hello and happy June! Today is a full and exciting episode because I have some updates for you for the Summer and it's a book club episode, which are always my favorites. This book kind of has a funny story with it—which I'll get to.
We are out of school, we're getting used to new rhythms with all the kids home and I've got some fun Summer episodes coming up. Lots to talk about today, but today's book is called The 4 Disciplines of Execution and it was a doozy of a business book. There was a lot in there, but I'm really excited to simplify it and kind of translate it to how we can apply it to our work and our homes. It's going to be good.
Just a reminder before we start, you can always find at the book club books at nancyray.com/bookclub and follow along with what I'm reading throughout the year.
All right, let's talk about what's around the corner for this Summer before diving into the content of The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
Y'all it is hot here in North Carolina. Kids are out of school, I'm trying to find my new rhythm with my littles home, babysitters, childcare, taking them to the gym, taking four kids to the pool, and none of them can swim—fun times. You know, it's going to be great.
I did want to say this book episode is kind of about work and business stuff, which we're going to apply it to our home lives even, but the next three episodes are going to be more play, they're going to be fun. Next week is going to be called The Summer Episode, and after that I'm going to share three photo project ideas for you to tackle this Summer. The episode after that, I'm going to share 10 Things Saving my Life Right Now, which I totally stole that idea from my friend, Emily P Freeman's podcast, but I just thought it'd be fun.
So they're going to be more lighthearted, more play kind of in the theme of Summer. Then after June is over, I am taking July off. I wanted to go ahead and give you the heads up. This is the beauty of having an ad-free podcast.
Guys—I just want to play with my kids.
I just want to work on some home projects, I want to go lay out by the pool, I want to read, I just want to take July off so there's no pressure here and I will say this though, I'm going to be hosting a fun Summer project. A photo project inside my Patreon community just for the month of July and we're all going to choose one photo project to work on in our homes. Whether it's our physical photos, family yearbook, baby book, refreshing the frames in your home—just one thing, and we're going to keep each other accountable and do it in July.
Now you don't have to be a patron to participate, but if you want the accountability, I highly encourage you to sign up for patreon.com/workandplay and you get to support the podcast that way and be accountable to do this photo challenge.
Also, I'm offering my Patreon community $30 off the Legacy Photo System, which is my course that teaches you all how to organize your photos once and for all. Get them organized, streamlined, do the projects you want to do. You're going to get that code in Patreon through July 4th. So if you're already a member of Patreon, you'll get the code.
If you join the month of June through July 4th, you will get the code to take $30 off Legacy Photo System. So patreon.com/workandplay go there, sign up by July 4th to grab that discount code. I personally recommend you going ahead and joining Patreon, getting the discount code, then you can start to work through the course and you'll know which project you want to tackle in July.
Okay, that is my long intro update—let's go talk about The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney.
Now, funny story about the book. I first heard about this book because Chris McChesney talked at the global leadership summit several years ago, what a dynamic speaker. He had me laughing, he had the best stories and he really explained how business owners are amazing at strategy, making business strategies, making a 5 year business plan, 10 year business plan, do nice things, but they're not so great at the execution piece. Like actually getting the stuff done and that's where The 4 Disciplines of Execution was born.
So I’ve had this on my reading list forever. Well, I bought the book, I started reading through it and then I was like, okay, this is just, this is a lot. So then I downloaded the audio book, I used one of my audio credits to download the audio book and started listening to that. I listened to it on like, almost double speed, this is a big book. And then guys, can I just be honest for a second?
I couldn't finish it. This is the first time I think, in the history of the Nancy Ray Book Club that I just said, you know what? I can't finish this book. Why is this funny? I don't know. I just think it's funny, I think it's funny that I thought I could read this book right now.
It literally is targeted to like corporate business owners and leaders, like CEOs of giant companies and leaders of leaders and team leaders and I'm like laughing at myself cause it's me mostly just cleaning my house and taking care of my kids and cooking for them. And here I am reading this giant business book and I thought, you know what?
I know the content in this is good, but I just don't have the time. I can't, my brain is not computing this. So then I went into Audible and I found a summary of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. So if you read this book along with my book club, I am just giving you a gold star right now. Thank you for reading it.
I also just am raising my hand in my little podcast recording closet saying I did not finish this. I don't know that I ever will, but I did read the summary and I still love the principles of the book. And I still love the author, he's a dynamic speaker. I still stand behind this choice, but also kind of what was I thinking all at same time?
So that's my funny story and my update, let's jump into the actual contents of the book though, because it really was good and thanks to the summary I do know about it. I did read probably a fourth of the book so I have a pretty solid foundation. All right, let's start talking about The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
Now, two things I want to cover before we jump into the disciplines.
What is a WIG?
What is the whirlwind?
Because they talk about these two things throughout the book and I love these terms. I think this right here is like the most important thing that you can understand if you don't take anything else away from this podcast episode, know what a WIG is and what the whirlwind is.
So a WIG stands for your Wildly Important Goal. The whirlwind represents all the day-to-day stuff that we have to take care of, keep track of, all the things that just take our attention away. A lot of them are very urgent that we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Now, of course, Chris McChesney, the author is focusing on the workplace and your Wildly Important Goal for your work and the whirlwind of work. But I was constantly thinking about it in the terms of my home and my home life. So you can apply it, I believe to either one of those. So you take it and apply it however you want but I think it's important to know what those two terms mean.
Wildly Important Goals—like the one thing you want to focus on, the most important thing next and the whirlwind is all of the urgent day-to-day stuff we get caught up in.
Okay, so let's talk about the four disciplines.
Discipline number one is to focus on the wildly important.
I love that they used the word wildly, focus on the wildly important. What is your WIG?
What is your Wildly Important Goal? Focus is the thing that we struggle with the most and leaders especially, he talks about leaders in business, really struggle with this because they're always thinking of new good things, ways to improve. So narrowing your focus is so hard and I personally think as kind of the household manager of my home, this applies here.
There's so many different things that I can do or work on, it's really hard to just narrow your focus on one thing. He makes a point that you have to cut out good things, you have to cut out even great things and focus on one wildly important goal.
I love the example he gives in the book of the iPhone and Steve Jobs and when they created the iPhone, Apple had one phone and the competitor of Apple was like shaking his head and was like, how can we even compete with this? Because the number one competitor of Apple at the time had 40 phones to offer to their customers and when you take that intensity of focus and push it all towards one product or one idea or one strategy, you're going to get a higher quality result versus spreading that around to a lot of different ideas or different products.
Steve Jobs said that they said no to good ideas and great products all the time and with a budget of like Fido, I don't think I'm getting these numbers right, but it was in the billions. I think it was like 43 billion is what they said that Apple brought in in revenue, something crazy like that.
Don't quote me on that but it's in the billions, which is all you need to know. They said all of the products that we offer could fit on one desk, $43 billion coming in and all of that is channeled towards just a few products.
That's the power of focus. That's the power of focusing on one thing at a time, perfecting one function at a time, one product at a time, whatever it is for you and your work or your home. So Discipline Number One is to focus on the wildly important. What is your WIG?
Discipline number two, to act on lead measures.
Now your lag measure is the goal, but the lead measure is the thing that determines the lag measure. So let's say you want to lose 10 pounds, that's your lag measure. I want to lose 10 pounds. That's the thing that happens after you do all the lead measures of eating healthy, working out, you know, all the things you do to lose 10 pounds. So the lead measures are the things that we actively do to drive the lag measure.
I talked about this in a book from earlier this year, The 12 Week Year, which I'm still loving, but they talk a lot. This is, you know, business terminology, lead measure, lag measure. I did not understand this for the longest time. Someone had to explain it to me like so many times, I still didn't get it until this year, but I think I'm getting it.
The bottom line is my whole life I have been writing goals down in the form of lag measures, but I have not been tracking the lead measures. So I'll say my goal this year is to run a half marathon, lose this weight, book this many weddings when I did Nancy Ray Photography, clean out these rooms. I don't know, just, I'm just making things up off the top of my head right now. But you know what I'm saying?
I had this list of things that I wanted to accomplish in a year, but I wouldn't focus on the lead measures and when I did focus on the lead measures, which are the things like training for the half marathon or sticking with a certain eating habit, whatever, fill in the blank, then I would see the results, but it took mapping it out throughout the year.
So Discipline Two is act on the lead measures so you're always focusing on the things you can control, you're focusing on the things that you do to produce the result, you're not focusing on the result and you need them to be weekly.
You need to check in with them every single week. They need to be specific, they need to be measurable, you need to have a start date and an end date, and you need to know how to get from where you are to where you're headed. So I love this mindset. It's very much a mindset thing, but also there's the actionable item of checking in on this, like once a week. Acting on the lead measures every single week that really drives results and helps you execute.
Discipline number three is to keep a compelling scoreboard.
Now, scoreboards inspire action and they talk a lot about choosing the type of scoreboard you want, whether it's graphs or a wheel, I think like a gas gauge. You always want to be pointing in the green or like a visually stimulating and interesting scoreboard for a work environment.
I thought that was really interesting, but in my brain, I'm translating this to, okay, what is something I could do in my life? Or, in what ways have I had a version of a scoreboard that have helped me stay on track in my home, in my work, in whatever I'm trying to accomplish? And for me, I think it's having something up on the wall that I can see and mark on.
So the one that comes to my mind the most is when Will and I were paying off our house for the first time we had this chalk wall in our kitchen and we drew these bubbles and I think we had $80,000 left on the balance of our house.
Gosh, when was this? It doesn't matter. It was when I was 25, I guess, like 10 years ago. So we had these big bubbles and it started and we wrote an 8 and then we did 7.5 and then we did 7 and then 6.5, then 6, then 5.5, 5 all the way down to 0.
And what I love is, you know, we started with this giant number of $80,000, but visually every time we would pay $5,000 towards the house, we would color in one of those bubbles until we colored them all in. And our house is paid for, it took several years to do it but keeping that scoreboard in front of us kept us on task at really trying to stay on budget and put any extra money that we were making towards the house because we wanted to fill in that next bubble.
So I'm trying to think now, okay, what are some things that I could do in my life? What's something that I could print out and put on my fridge or put on my bathroom mirror? I have things in my planner, but I don't necessarily look at them often every day and I just think there's an element of keeping a compelling scoreboard that is so helpful and really drives us to action. So that's Discipline Three is keep a compelling scoreboard.
Discipline four, create a cadence of accountability.
So in your workplace that would translate to having regular meetings every single week that keep track of the WIG, the Wildly Important Goal you're working on, and it keeps you accountable and it should be the same day, same time. It should be short, you know, 20 minutes and the questions that should be asked are, “Hey, let's look back at the last week. What did you accomplish to contribute to the Wildly Important Goal?” Review and acknowledge the lessons you learned, whether you did or didn't accomplish those things. Plan for the next week and when you do, take ownership of just one, maybe two things to work on to reach the goal of finishing the wildly important goal.
That's your focus. Everything should be channeled towards the focus of the WIG, the Wildly Important Goal and it's so necessary to have this cadence of accountability and check-in. When I had my team with Nancy Ray Photography, our weekly meetings were crucial and the accountability part at the end was the most important thing that we worked through.
And so I love this because there is this element of accountability in our home life right now, we don't have a Wildly Important Goal. We just are focused on relationships and whatnot, but we still check in once a week to touch base as a family, to talk about our plans for the upcoming week, to encourage each other, to love on each other, to pay the kids for their chores that they did and all that good stuff. Having some sort of weekly system that keeps you accountable for something you're trying to achieve, I think is crucial in order to achieve that thing.
So this is something I'm going to be working on. I don't know if I'm just going to do it with Will or my sister and with some personal things in my life, I could do it with Sammy Jo with work things.
Definitely apply this to my work in this podcast and just kind of the direction I'm headed there. What is the Wildly Important Goal?
Focus on the wildly important.
Act on the lead measures, which are the things that I can control, we can control.
Keep a compelling scoreboard. So visually it's in front of me all the time.
Create a cadence of accountability and check in so that we stay on track.
Now there's a lot of overlap here in this book with The 12 Week Year, which I read and talked about earlier this year on the podcast. So I like that because it's kind of saying the same thing.
I need to focus on this, this cadence, but I really love how simple these four things are and one of the things that the author says again and again and again is “You can't just do a few of these, you have to do all four if you want to see true execution take place.” If you really want to see things move in your work, you have to stick to all four.
So it's simple, but it takes a lot of discipline. Once you work on automating it and getting it as part of your system and your routine of work, then it will blow your mind how much you can do. So as I do with all of my book club books, I'm going to share with you my three biggest takeaways from this book.
Number one, do one thing at a time.
Define the Wildly Important Goal. What is wildly important and see it through to its completion before trying to do another big idea.
Number two, I need to create some sort of visual scoreboard for things that I want to accomplish.
And I want to hang it up somewhere I can see it.
And number three, this quote got me so good, Chris McChesney said “There will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute.”
Which means I have to say no to a lot of good ideas and say yes to the few amazing ones.
All right, I'm going to be putting this book in the Work and Play Cornerstore, which for quick access, you can always head to nancyray.com/cornerstore and it will take you directly to my Amazon affiliates where you can see everything I've ever recommended or talked about here on the podcast or Instagram. I'm going to put this book here and I'm going to put the summary because the summary was just more digestible and still amazing.
I'm going to close with that quote one more time.
“There will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
