The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Revised and Updated: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals

The highest level of performance always comes from people who are emotionally engaged, and the highest level of engagement comes from knowing the score—that is, if people know whether they are winning or losing. It’s that simple.

This is achieved not only by selecting the specific area where you want to achieve breakthrough results (your WIG), but also bringing it into focus by defining a starting line (your current level of performance), a finish line (your desired improved performance), and a deadline for the WIG (the date by which this level must be achieved).

The science is very clear. The human brain can give its full focus to only one single object at any given moment.

define the daily or weekly lead measures, the achievement of which will lead to the goal. Then each week the team identifies the most important actions that will drive those lead measures.

Somewhere in every process there are leverage points—critical steps in the process where performance falters. If these leverage points become lead measures, the team can apply concentrated energy against them.

increase their number of contacts with new customers, potential advertisers who had not done business with the newspaper;

the team won’t play at their best unless they are emotionally engaged—and that happens when they can tell if they are winning or losing.

Basically, the more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.

We’ve found these questions useful in discovering lead measures: What could we do that we’ve never done before that might make all the difference to the Team WIG? What strengths of this team can we use as leverage on the Team WIG? Where are our “pockets of excellence”? What do our best performers do differently? What weaknesses might keep us from a