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

Lead Measure Builder Insert the Wildly Important Goal and lag measure in the top box. Brainstorm ideas for lead measures. Brainstorm methods for measuring those ideas. Rank in order of impact on the WIG. Test your ideas against the checklist on the following page. Write your final lead measures.

When a team moves from having a dozen “we really hope” goals to one “no matter what” goal, the effect on morale is dramatic.

Each week, one by one, team members answer a simple 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?”

Your WIG is an outcome so significant that it cannot be accomplished without the finest efforts of your team and by performance that is above their day-to-day level.

After producing the list of candidate lead measures, we often hear team members say, “We need to do all of these things.” No doubt they are all good things to do, but the more you try to do, the less energy you have to give to any one thing.

When a team defines its lead measures, they are making a strategic bet. In a sense, they are saying, “We’re betting that by driving these lead measures, we are going to achieve our Wildly Important Goal.” They believe that the lever is going to move the rock, and because of that belief, they engage.

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

Top performers are thus more than twice as likely to see and interact with some form of compelling scoreboard so they can see if they are winning or not.

A good lead measure has two basic characteristics. It’s predictive of achieving the goal, and it can be influenced by the team members.