4 Rules of Execution

Everyone has good ideas, but rare is the ability to execute those ideas. A good idea without execution is worthless. Authors Sean Chris and Jim surveyed over two hundred thousand business leaders worldwide to understand why they routinely failed to execute their good ideas and meaningful goals. They found that leaders and teams who routinely fail to execute their good ideas are completely consumed but what they call "The Whirlwind."

The whirlwind is the chaos of day-to-day life. You get to the end of the week and wonder how I was busy all week, but I don't think I accomplished a damn thing. It's the endless stream of incoming messages. It's the problems that show up unexpectedly that you need to address. Everything in the whirlwind seems urgent, and when everything seems urgent, those essential but less urgent ideas get forgotten and left behind. The only way to reliably execute your good ideas and important goals is to have a system of execution that can withstand the power of the whirlwind. 

Following four rules make up a system of execution that can help you reliably execute.

1. Focus on your WIG 

At any given moment at a major airport, planes are taxing around the airport, taking off and coming to the airport that needs to land soon. If you were an air traffic controller, you would need to manage all those planes, and each passenger in those planes would tell you that their aircraft is the most critical. Only one plane is wildly important to you right now, and that's the plane coming into land right now. Focusing on and landing this one plane successfully makes all other planes seem secondary.

It would be best to start approaching work like this air traffic controller and keep all your urgent and essential goals on your radar. And you are doing the minimum you can to prevent them from crashing or getting out of control and then using all your remaining energy to successfully execute and land your wildly important goal, your WIG. To find this essential goal, ask yourself if everything else remained at its current level of performance and what one achievement would make everything else seem secondary. Once you have a good idea of what you think that achievement might be, frame it in the following format: X to Y by Z as my wildly important goal is to raise my monthly sales revenue from $6K to 12K by December 31st. 

2. Measures Lead Behaviors 

Your goal is to lose 20 pounds, so you go on a diet. During the first two weeks, you step on the scale every day to see if your weight has changed, but the scale hardly moves day after day. How likely are you to stick to your diet? If a metric that you're measuring isn't changing like a weight, in this case, your execution will suffer. Most results that we want to change, like losing weight, increasing revenue, or growing the number of subscribers, all have a lag effect. There's a considerable lag time between the actions we take and the results we want to see. If you only measure your lag result during that lag time, a metric will hardly change in the short term regardless of how much action you take. You'll quickly lose focus on your wildly important goal and stop executing. Without any signs of improvement, our execution will suffer. Therefore we need to measure something that we can influence and improve every day or every week. What we need to measure our lead behaviors. 

Lead behaviors are those critical day-to-day activities that ultimately lead to our desired results. If you had a blog and wanted to get more subscribers, you shouldn't just measure the increasing subscribers each week. You should count the number of words you write each day and the number of articles you post each week. If you're a salesperson, you shouldn't just measure the number of sales you're getting each week; you should also count the number of daily prospect calls you're making and the number of follow-up emails you're delivering. These lead behavior measurements are something that you can increase every day, and when you increase these metrics every day, you increase your engagement and execution. And when you focus on proven and validated lead behaviors achieving your lag result will be a matter of time. 

3. Put up a Scoreboard 

Let's say you get together with friends on Saturday and play soccer in the park. You make teams, set up the needs, and start the game. But thirty minutes into that game, some of your friends lose interest because no one remembered to keep score. But what if everyone on your team knew they were down by one goal with five minutes left to play? Do you think they would still be disengaged and walking off the field? 

People play differently when they know the score.

It doesn't matter if you're playing soccer or executing a work project. Knowing the score generates a will to win, and the will to win fuels execution. If we aren't frequently reminded of the score, our will to win will fade, our implementation will suffer, and the whirlwind will consume our attention. The best way to be reminded of the score is to put up a scoreboard in your office that is simple and easy to see. You should be able to look at this scoreboard and know if you're winning or losing in five seconds or less. It should only include three things. 

WIG:

LAG: 

LEAD:

If your WIG were to Increase monthly sales revenue from $6K to12k by December 31st, your lag measurement would be sales, and your lead measurement would be the number of calls or hours spent making Facebook marketing videos. 

WIG: Increase monthly sales revenue from $6K to12k by December 31st

LAG: Sales 

LEAD: #of calls each weak

If you're increasing your lead measurement day after day or week after week, you feel like you're winning. Once you see a lead measurement corresponding to an increase in a lag measurement, you verify that you're winning, and your execution and commitment go through the roof. 

4. Schedules Weekly Accountability Talks 

Have you ever been in a project team at school or work, or do you need to report on your status and make commitments each week verbally? I have, and it's incredible how much more action I take when I know my teammates will hold me accountable for what I say. It was a powerful routine of accountability. When you verbally commit to your own goals before your peers or teammates who will support you but hold you accountable. You have a strong desire to honor your word and protect your reputation. These are powerful motivators that cause you to focus on your wildly important goal and prevent yourself from being consumed by the whirlwind. 

By implementing these four rules into your workweek, you can get yourself and your team to reliably execute your most significant ideas and your wildly important goals.