📚 5 Books I Wish I’d Read in My First Years as a Founder: Part 4— The 4 Disciplines of Execution

Ever felt swamped by daily tasks, drowning your strategic goals in a whirlwind of urgency?

The 4th book in this series — “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” is a lifeline in this storm. It unveils a straightforward approach to managing chaos and chasing objectives. It’s all about focusing on wildly important goals, pinpointing lead measures, keeping a motivational scoreboard, and embracing a rhythm of accountability. Let’s dive in!

💡 Why I Wish I’d Read It Sooner

• Practical Wisdom through Examples: Rich with practical examples, the book served as a practical guide rather than a theoretical one. Is a roadmap filled with relatable instances, making it easier to envision the application of the framework within your organization. The real-world examples provided valuable insights, enabling you to navigate the complexities of implementation with more confidence.
• A Simple Yet Powerful Framework: The book presented a straightforward yet intricate framework for driving goal execution (The 4DX) within teams and organizations. While simple in concept, the challenge lies in its implementation, requiring thoughtful adaptation to the unique dynamics of any company.

🚀 Key Takeaways and Lessons

Similar to Chris Voss’s book from this series, I’m using this one as a field guide, always keeping it in my backup and opening it when I find myself in need of a bit of guidance in approaching situations related to planning or executing our goals.

• Morale Through Victory: “Nothing drives the morale and engagement of a team more than winning” — in a time when all of us are searching for new ways to keep our team’s morale up, this book offers a great takeaway: the unparalleled impact of winning together on team morale and engagement. Celebrating achievements, irrespective of size, generates a sense of accomplishment and propels progress.
• Navigating the Whirlwind: Balancing new strategies within the whirlwind of daily operations is a challenge every leader faces. This book stresses the importance of addressing urgent tasks while not neglecting strategic goals — “If you ignore the urgent, it can kill you today. If you ignore the important, it can kill you tomorrow”
• Lead vs. Lag Measures: Grasping the difference between proactive Lead Measures and outcome-oriented Lag Measures was a great takeaway for me. Reading this book I’ve realized most of the time we used and are using Lag Measures, an outcome which most of the time is hard to control. Understanding and using proactive measures to ensure desired outcomes, under the form of Lead Measures, is a game-changing strategy..
• The Leader’s Dilemma: The art of saying no to good ideas is a counterintuitive yet vital skill. Focusing on wildly important goals sometimes means rejecting promising initiatives — “The will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute”

📋 Recommendation to First-Time Founders

• Ideal Timing for Implementation: October to November marks the perfect period to dive into this book. As you gear up for the upcoming year’s planning, this reading material can be incredibly insightful, providing essential strategies for your team.
• Gradual Implementation is Key: Like many valuable strategies, applying the principles from this book to your team’s planning should begin with small, manageable steps. Start modestly and refine your approach as you progress.
• Simplicity and Discipline: Most of the time we look for clever ways and apps to track our progress and to automate the work. This is great if you have the possibility of doing it, but don’t let this stop you. Even a basic Excel file, coupled with discipline, can suffice. Ensure the file is accessible to everyone via a shared link, and prioritize the “Scoreboard” review as the first item in your weekly planning meeting so everyone can answer the question “What are the one or two most important things I can do in the next week (outside the whirlwind) that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard?

You don’t hear leaders saying, “I wish I were better at driving strategies that require people to do things differently.” What you are more likely to hear is a leader saying, “I wish I didn’t have Tom, Paul, and Sue to deal with!”

It’s natural for a leader to assume the people are the problem. After all, they are the ones not doing what we need to have done. But you would be wrong. The people are not the problem!

The problem is inherent in the system. As a leader, you own responsibility for the system.

📚 Stay Tuned

Stay tuned for more books that I found very helpful in recent years as a first-time founder.

If you’ve read this book, I’m curious, have you implemented the framework? How was the experience, any tips & tricks to share?

Let’s learn & grow together!