How to use the 4DX system to drive growth

Chris McChesney:

They would just get so consternated and embarrassed and rather than beating people up with terminology… These are bright people. Our CEO has an expression, if you see a person on the top of a mountain, you’re going to be pretty sure they didn’t fall there.

Chris McChesney:

These are not stupid people. You don’t do somebody a favor by treating them that way. And they got to where they got because of some, either, conscious or intuitive genius. And so we try and really understand, where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? And the less boxes we put them in, the better we start to understand that strategic intent.

Chris McChesney:

Thanks Alex. Delighted to be here.

Chris McChesney:

That’s right. That’s right.

Chris McChesney:

Anywhere you want to go, we’re game, you got it.

Chris McChesney:

Okay. In a nutshell, it’s a way to execute on the hardest part of your strategy in the face of competing priorities and distractions. And that part of the strategy almost inevitably revolves around a significant change in human behavior or something that requires a high degree of human engagement. That’s a capsulized-

Chris McChesney:

… definition. We can go anywhere you want with that.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Well, what’s interesting Alex, is the longer we looked at this, we saw that they danced together all the way through. There was even an HBR article written on this a few years back. That you have a very difficult time delineating where strategy starts and where execution begins. But in a general sense, if you just said to someone, “What’s harder? Strategy or execution?” People get what you mean by that. There’s the planning and then there’s the, okay, we got to put legs on this thing. We got to get it off the ground. And what’s funny is, that’s how this whole thing started for FranklinCovey 20 years ago. Rom Sheeran was working with our executive team and he asked us two questions. What’s harder strategy or execution? And we said, execution. No. He didn’t say what’s harder, he said-

Chris McChesney:

It does, right?

Chris McChesney:

Right. He said, “What do leaders struggle with more? Do leaders struggle more with strategy or do they struggle more with execution? FranklinCovey, 7 Habits, Stephen Covey, we’ve been deep in leadership development. And we very quickly said, “Oh, they struggle way more with execution.” And then his next question got us. And his next question was, what do we educate them in? What do we teach them? If they get an MBA, if they go to business school, do we teach them about execution? It was like, that was the shot that just sank, and we just started dedicating more and more energy and resources to that question.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Great. Thanks Alex.

Chris McChesney:

There are a lot of definitions that various people use. But the very technical definitions we found aren’t that helpful because they’re not that well understood. And so I find myself actually softening the term strategy rather than trying to put sharp lines on it, just so I can relate to people. So I will soften it by asking people to talk to me about their strategic intent. And one of the ways that I do that is, I get them to think about the difference between all the energy required today to maintain the operation, versus where are you trying to go? And that little delineation gets them to open up a little bit. If I ask for a Bain or McKinsey definition of strategy, well their brains lock up. Right?

Chris McChesney:

They’re like, “Oh, I’m going to go ahead and screw this up. And I’ve read Michael Porter and I’m still going to screw this up. But if we soften it, and sometimes I’ll even step away from the word strategy, and I’ll just be like, what’s the plan? Where are you trying to go? What’s the direction? Every leader has got two things. They’ve got to keep the operation going and profitable, and healthy and surviving, and then you gotta be taking it somewhere. And it’s the, where are we taking it? That seems to encompass strategy.

Chris McChesney:

But we went the other way.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. They would just get so consternated and embarrassed. And rather than beating people up with terminology… These are bright people. Our CEO has an expression. If you see a person on the top of a mountain, you’re going to be pretty sure they didn’t fall there.

Chris McChesney:

These are not stupid people. And you don’t do somebody favours by treating them that way. And they got to where they got because of some, either conscious or intuitive genius. And so we try and really understand, where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? And the less boxes we put them in, the better we start to understand that strategic intent.

Chris McChesney:

So one of the things that we’ve found very helpful, we call it a framework for execution. Let me say it this way. Even before we get into the disciplines, we take a look at that strategic intent through an execution lens. So we say, if all of you have to do directional intent, you live in a big bubble. If you broke that bubble into three categories, let’s dissect it, let’s break it down. Let’s say, these categories are more from an execution perspective than a strategy perspective, but it’s interesting. Just by breaking it down, you can feel the blood pressure in the room lower.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Lower. Just like, okay. Because when it’s all together, it’s overwhelming. We want to do this, but we don’t even know how to do it. And before we can do that, we have to do this thing and we know that’s contingent on this, and we don’t even control those factors. And then they will start bleeding. So we just-

Chris McChesney:

… lower down.

Chris McChesney:

Okay. You’ve been there, you know what that feels like.

Chris McChesney:

And we say, okay. So in terms of all the stuff that you know you have to do, let’s start to make a list of those elements that are going to be executed through what we call a stroke of the pen. Now it’s not as easy as the stroke of the pen, but they’re things that require management, leadership authority or financial resources. Okay. We’ve got to restructure, we’ve got a critical acquisition, we discontinued a third of our product line, we were moving the manufacturing process in this direction, these are things that are going to happen because we said so.

We take a number of elements out and set it over there and they go, “Yeah, big consequences. Takes brains, takes guts, but it’s going to happen.” Okay. Then on the other side, we say, “Okay. Now give me those elements of the plan that are necessary for life support, that are necessary just for sustaining the way the thing runs today.” So these are things that are associated with your existing KPIs, with existing metrics, and they don’t have a hard time with this. They go, “Yeah, that’s new, but it’s really just a variation of this.” And that’s going to happen in conjunction with something else that’s going on. And so they start to parse between these two worlds of, management authority, stroke of the pen, chess moves, and life support, vital signs work. And so as they start to make these two lists, there’s this third column.

And the third column is for the stuff that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit because it can’t get done there. So yes, we changed the product mix, but just because we did that doesn’t mean that Salesforce is going to actually follow us. Because they say, in order for this to work, the Salesforce has got to change who they’re talking to. I was at someplace yesterday, it’s a software company, and they’re in a beautiful spot. The whole thing hinges on the fact that 100 people have to start talking to somebody new and they’re scared to death of that. It’s like, it can’t happen in the day job because the existing inertia won’t allow it to happen and we can’t buy it. And some of it’s funny. Some of them are like, “I’d spend the money.” Let me tell you, I’d write a billion dollar check if I could get this done.”

Chris McChesney:

Right. They can’t buy it and they can’t mandate it. And it’s these things in the middle, this column we call breakthroughs, and they’re things they require. So just by that very simple breakdown between stroke of the pen, life support, and breakthroughs, you feel the blood pressure start to go down because they go, “Yeah. You know what? Okay. I can see this now a little clearer.”

Chris McChesney:

Okay, now it’s not always, it can go there.

Chris McChesney:

That can be ugly… That can be the ugly form, but think about it like resource allocation. Where are we going to spend our money? Who’s going to report to who? Hard-line change. It’s like the stroke of the pen bundle.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Structural, solid stuff.

Chris McChesney:

Are we going to buy that piece of machinery or not? Are we going to outsource-

Chris McChesney:

… that function or not? And it’s the stuff that, if you’ve never been a leader before, it’s what you think leaders do. It turns out it’s only a part of what they do.

Chris McChesney:

Right. But it’s all the stuff that, it’s going to happen because you said so. And it can happen at the executive level, but it can also happen at a frontline manager. The frontline manager changes the schedule. And we’re not going to operate that machinery with three people anymore, we’re going to use two people and we’re going to use a Rover to move back and forth. They can make stroke of the pen choices at high levels or low level, but it’s-

Chris McChesney:

… going to happen because we said so.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Please, sorry.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah, you’re saying it really well. So let’s throw another metaphor here.

Chris McChesney:

If overall financial success or market share success, those high level metrics of success represented in the title of a book, every book is divided into chapters. Okay. Now some of those chapters are going to fall under the stroke of the pen stuff. We went in a different direction, we reallocated resources, those got consequences. A bunch of those chapters are under life support or the day job components of what we’ve evolved into. There’s a couple of chapters that’s sitting there in the middle and it’s like, I can’t get it with the current inertia of the business and I can’t buy it. And they always have those breakthroughs in the middle. They always seem to be associated with a high degree of human commitment.

Compliance is really useful on both the wings, but this stuff in the middle seems to only respond… It’s like the leader sits there and looks at it and goes, “If they don’t care, it’s not even worth doing. If they’re not into this, we’re pushing a rope.” It has that feel to it.

Chris McChesney:

I’m going to say something that’s not in the book or the second version of the book.

Chris McChesney:

Don’t underestimate the power of small wins. Don’t try to force the title of the book into the breakthrough. Really nailing the critical chapter. Putting disproportionate effort against the strategic bottleneck is often enough to tip it because you’ve got the wings working for you. You’ve got smart allocation of resources and good decisions and assets over here, and you’ve got an existing process that’s sustaining and supporting the organisation today. It has a cultural impact too. So here’s the idea. I want to go back to a little piece of research that was done in the 1960s, by an industrial psychologist named Frederick Herzberg. Some people will recognise this from their studies.

And Herzberg separated the stop that satisfies employees from the stuff that engages them. You got to get your head around that for a second. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that will directly affect employee satisfaction that has no bearing on employee engagement. Satisfaction is whether I like the job, engagements whether I give a damn about the work. Don’t blur these, they’re as different as they can be. Satisfaction, do I have a best friend at work? Do I like my boss? Do I like my work conditions? Do I like my benefits? Am I making good money? Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. That’s a whole litany of stuff.

On the engagement side, there’s two things. Am I part of something that’s winning? Am I progressing? Am I winning? The thing against which I’m winning at, does it matter? Just those two things. And you can do this. Some of the conferences if I’m feeling brave, I’ll have 2000 people pick a partner and in 30 seconds tell each other where they were in their careers when they were most lit up, when they were most engaged, couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. Then I’ll get them back, and I’ll list all the satisfaction stuff, and I’ll say, maybe it was there, maybe it wasn’t, there’s no correlation. You may or may not be making good money. Won’t correlate. You may or may not have liked your boss, we’ll correlate. You may have hated your boss, but it was still my best time.

You can list all those things, and they’re all looking at each other, you see these big smiles and then I’ll ask them to raise their hand if in that moment they felt like they were winning at something that mattered and all the hands go up. You can literally do this research live. So I say all of that, sorry for the long answer, Alex.

Chris McChesney:

I say all of that to come back to your question and say, if we could add anything to what Herzberg said, it would be this, you don’t have to be winning at everything. Parts of the existing operation could be absolutely brutal. There could be things in the environment that are out of our control right now, and we’re getting handed our head because of something that happened in the environment, on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Matter of fact, 80% of it can be held, but give me some piece of sanity. Give me something that I can win at and feel like it really mattered, and you get all the engagement lift you want, right there. So I think some leaders get discouraged because, well, I can’t make it a winnable game because of X, Y, and Z. I don’t control this and I don’t support the resources. And yeah, we get it. That’s okay. But find the small win, find the strategic bottleneck and create a breakthrough.

Chris McChesney:

Sorry. Yeah. I just threw that in there. It’s another way of saying-

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. It’s another way of saying, where’s the breakthrough?” So whether you view it like moving towards a result or moving away from a problem, whether you see it like an opportunity or the bottleneck that’s holding you back, it’s the small wind that finds itself in the middle of those three elements, that is the thing that requires a high degree of human engagement or a change in behavior, or it’s not really going to happen. And every team seems to have one.

Chris McChesney:

Alex, can you do all my podcasts? I would like you to be my interviewer. I see why you’re listening to people. He’s very authentic, he’s really got his head into this, nothing is —

Chris McChesney:

… about you and all. You’re really into this. All right. So here’s what we’ve observed. We don’t know anything about ourselves, we’ve just observed certain things. Based on how you’re defining the word vision, I think the short answer to the question is, no, you don’t tend to see these breakthroughs show up in one of two ways, and we nicknamed them perform or transform. So a performer, and the term we use in the book is a wildly important goal or a wig. It’s calling it a breakthrough, or overcoming a bottleneck.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. This is the one. That breakthrough idea, when it’s given a starting line, a finish line, a deadline, and it becomes a target, a disciplined one, it becomes a wildly important goal or a wig. One form of that is, we call a perform wig. And that just means it’s something we’re already doing, we want to perform better at. So there’s seven components to really getting this production process right, and we’re going to double down on step four right now for the next five months. We’re going to perform better at that. We think that’s going to have a ripple effect, and we’re betting if we can perform better at that, and I’m a sales organisation, we’re going to work on performing better at prospecting new accounts.

We’re going to perform better at moving up market into a new demographic of client. It’s something we’re already doing, we’re just going to make a leap in progression. And we tend to gently move organisations in that direction if it’s their first go at this operating system.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Then the other one is the transform and it’s like, “Oh, we’re going in a whole new direction. And we’re reinventing this thing.” It’s not a pivot, it’s not a performance, we’re transforming, this is new turf. We haven’t gone here. Those transformational wigs are different in nature but those, I think are the ones that typically, there’s a visionary leader behind this with some guts and faith in what they’re doing.

Chris McChesney:

You’re saying this very well, Alex.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. And it can be very different by function. So depending on the team, the one thing could be different. So let me say this, because we’re going to be moving back and forth between an organisational perspective and a team perspective. And I want to be a little bit deliberate about this. The 4 Disciplines methodology really is a team by team based where the work happens methodology. If you look at the 4 Disciplines of Execution as a book and compare it to a lot of others, I could start naming off other things that go into this space. Most of them have a top down perspective and we went bottom up. Not deliberately, that’s just how it happened. Okay. Now, the primary focus of the 4 Disciplines is, team by team hitting critical objectives.

Sometimes in some organisations, those all go to one common idea. Organization’s have to go here and everybody is aligning to that one thing. We have to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and return them safely home, and there’s three sub wigs, which is navigation, propulsion, and life support, and your team better be aligned to one of those. And it’s all got to roll up. So they’re over highly centralised because of the strategic imperative. On the other end of the continuum, some leaders look at it and go, “I want the teams closest to the work to decide what their wildly important goal is. I want them to optimise, I don’t want to dictate that to them.” Okay. So I just want to put this out there, and then everything in between. Sometimes half the organisation has autonomy, the other half has to be lined up to critical strategic priorities. So that’s how this methodology is used. If that was clear at all.

Chris McChesney:

Oh, my God.

Chris McChesney:

Let’s go here. Yeah. Let’s start.

Chris McChesney:

It’s different at different levels and it’s different for different sizeS of the organisation. It’s not a ridiculous amount of time. Let’s get into the steps a little bit.

Chris McChesney:

I think that’ll help the question out a little bit.

Chris McChesney:

So let’s take a scenario that’s very simple. And we’ll just walk through a simple scenario rather than trying to match every situation.

Chris McChesney:

All right. So let’s suppose we’ve got a president, CEO, we’ve got half a dozen Vps, and underneath that half a dozen VPs, we’ve got 30 director, manager types with single team responsibilities. Okay. Mid size.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Small to mid-size organisation. How this might look. It’s funny because it’ll seem a little bit like I’m going to talk out of two sides of my mouth. Some of what I say, it’s going to sound a little top-down and some of what I’m going to say, is going to sound a little bottom up. This has been stuff we’ve played with now in over 3000 organisations for 20 years, and the originator passed away 13 years ago, the books are dedicated to a gentleman named Jim Stewart. Was a Deming Duran student of total quality and grew up in that vein, a big contributor to the stuff I’m explaining. Let’s say that the CEO, president, has some ideas on where this thing needs to go and block some time with the executive team. Let’s say they map out their existing work in those three categories, stroke of the pen, life support. And there’s a decision. Do we double down on this one key operational quality issue that could open up some doors, allow us some new buyers?

Then there’s also a market opportunity. Do we go here? We could pursue this. There’s two or three things that really could sit nicely in that breakthrough bucket in the middle. And at this stage, there’s debate, there’s discussion. The CEO at this point is holding court a little bit, listening to everybody’s argument. And then here are the attributes we really like to emphasise. Transparency, curiosity, and involvement. Okay. We’re going to do this at this level, then we’re going to take it down, and we’re going to hit the directors. It’s going to be a little different. Okay. So transparency means, if I have really strong feelings, I share them. If I’ve got really strong feelings and I’m really freaked out about a couple of things, I share that too.

I don’t burn. Here’s the one you didn’t hear me say, you didn’t hear me say persuasion. God, this is really hard for me personally, but I believe this to my core, stop selling them. We know you’re good at selling, we know you’re very charismatic, we know you’re very persuasive, just stop. You don’t have to. You get to make the decision anyways, you get the final call. They’re going to nod their head if you push hard enough, we get it. Instead, let’s go back to the three terms, transparency, curiosity, and involvement.

So transparency, put all your cards on the table. Let’s not play three hours of, what is the CEO really thinking, or are they really an involvement-based leader.

Chris McChesney:

Number two, curiosity. All right, Julie, everybody rolled their eyes when you said that and we all think we know what you meant, but I’m not sure we really do know what you mean. I want you to say it again for us, Julie. Because I don’t think we’re listening to you. All right. Marcus, what are you hearing Julie say? She’s onto something, and I don’t think we’ve been listening to her. She’s been trying to say this for six months and I don’t think we’re hearing her. And I think that data we saw last month is actually backing up what she says. I’m curious. Guess what we found out about curiosity? Stephen Covey said this 35 years ago. Stephen Covey believed the greatest need of the human soul was to be understood. If you were honestly curious about what they think, you don’t have to agree with them.

They would rather be understood than agreed with. No, he didn’t do it. I think he’s crazy for not doing it, but I’ll support him. Get that right. So you see the dynamic here.

Chris McChesney:

That’s a little bit right.

Chris McChesney:

The hardest thing for me-

Chris McChesney:

… in the leadership roles that I had, was just suspending my own biases. Wanting to chew my own tongue off like, oh, okay. I’m not going to go there. I’m just going to listen. You have to be in a good place emotionally to just listen on a highly charged topic that you know, you know all about.

Chris McChesney:

So it’s-

Chris McChesney:

Thank you for saying that.

Chris McChesney:

It is.

Chris McChesney:

Even if you struggle with it, they will give you points for trying. Even if you’re lousy and clumsy, and even if Jessica is like, “Okay, forget the last four sentences. I went on a rant. I’m going to roll it back. Julie, tell us again.” You get full credit for that, intent counts more than technique. Okay. Now, at some point, the group is going to solidify and then we tell leaders, “Hey, it’s time to make a call.” But once you’ve done this, once you’ve listened, you can make… So let’s say the group comes together and let’s say that they decide after the dust settles, that there’s one wig, one of these key goals is aimed at a transformative effort. And it’s going to take about a third of the functions in the organisation to work on that, and then the other is going to go after this quality issue.

And it’s going to take about another third of the organisation. Then the other third of the organisation, it can aim at whatever it wants to aim at. But everybody’s going to have one breakthrough in addition to their day job. Here’s where it gets fun. Can we go a little deeper?

Chris McChesney:

It is.

Chris McChesney:

That’s right.

Chris McChesney:

So now we bring in the directors. Now, if you’ve ever been in this room before, because you’re going to have half a dozen executives, this is the magic moment. You know what I’m talking about. You’re having these executives, they’re 25, 30 director manager types and they’re ready to listen. They’re at tables. I’m going to lay out four steps, what this meeting looks like. Step number one, first of all, the ground rules are laid out. So this is really important, that you lay out the ground rules upfront. And part of laying out the ground rules is to let folks know we’re not here to cast a vote, and we don’t need a consensus.

Chris McChesney:

We’re not here to vote and we don’t need consensus. A lot of people think we all have to be on the same page, no we don’t. That’s not what this is about. What this is about is, we want to understand the best we can before we make some decisions. So you can see two things happen. The first thing you’re going to see happen is those two primary goals get ratified, and then you’re going to see the 20 teams pick goals that are going to support them. So there’s a two-step and the two steps are very different. So the first step is, the senior level leaders lay out, here’s why we pick the two wildly important goals that we picked. Here’s what we’re concerned about.

We’re not trying to persuade you because we’re nervous about this here, and we see problems with that there, but this is why we chose this. This is why we didn’t do this, this is why we didn’t do this. We still are apprehensive about this, this, and this. So here’s what’s going to happen. At your tables, directors, come up with all of the clarifying questions you can come up with. No one’s allowed to give feedback right now.

We’re not going to give feedback on something we don’t fully understand, you can only ask clarifying questions.

Chris McChesney:

Right. And every time somebody starts to go, “Well, why did we do this?” That’s feedback. Do you have a clarifying question? Yes. When you say 75% by December, is that a rolling average or is that 75% in December? These statements, they’re completely concrete, then you handle 30 minutes of clarifying questions and you’re like, “Oh, they weren’t as clear as we thought they were.”

Chris McChesney:

You’re nailing it.

Chris McChesney:

That’s when they get feedback.

Chris McChesney:

So I watched my mentor do this 20 years ago. He would just ring every clarifying question out and three quarters of the feedback went away in the clarifying questions. They really got what’s going on. Okay. Now go back to your table and get feedback. We coach the leadership team, we’re on the side a little bit when this is going down. And then, what we would coach them is, don’t sell, don’t argue. You don’t have to sell and you don’t have to argue. You’re the bosses, it’s your choice in the end. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, you’re going to win the argument. You’re going to listen and you’re not just going to listen to look like you’re listening, you’re going to try and understand some things. These people know stuff you don’t know. You got a beautiful opportunity to vet your thinking.

You got a whole bunch of assumptions that you guys were making, that you now have an opportunity to really see if those assumptions hold up. And so what we would see a lot of times is, those goals would change based on the feedback. They said, Tanya is bringing up something. We talked about it, but then I don’t know where that went, but she’s right. It can’t be a rolling average. Yeah. And I think there is a third wig over here that you’re right. If we don’t accomplish that, none of this makes sense. Tommy, I don’t know how we didn’t see that. And Julie, you’re making a really valid point, we talked about that too, but here’s why we’re not doing that. And dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so, we are just going to gather as much as we can, give us a break, we’re going to tighten this thing down one last time, and we’re going to put it to bed.

Now, most of the feedback didn’t get adopted, but it got understood. So we’re going to come back and we’re going to give… Now, this is one of the craziest things that happened in my career that I’ve ever observed happening right now. And I had to watch it happen multiple times before I believed my own eyes. Some of the feedback in certain cultures gets really tasty and I am sometimes shocked at the level of audacity of junior officers at an organisation and how nasty it will get until I think about my own organisation and then it comes back to me and I’ve seen it. People will give me liberty or give me death statements, and I’m thinking, “Oh, it’s not going their way, this is going to get ugly.” Gets put to bed.

Executives come back, here’s where we landed on these, this is what we’ve changed, this is it. No, rah-rah, all targets by the way. No inspiring language, we’re going to get engagement folks, we’re not going to get engagement by flowering up the goals and making them sound pretty. It’s all just targets. Okay. Now here comes the magic. We’re onto the next step. And then the next step, here’s what we need. We need each of you leaders to think of one outcome from your area of responsibility that would have the biggest impact on one of these wigs. We might be vital if you can’t sell us, but we won’t dictate. We won’t tell you, we’ll just send you back to the drawing board. Okay. So right now we’ve got a little bit. Before, the directors were in a consultative role, they were consulting the senior leaders.

Now we’ve switched it, and they’re taking the lead, and we’re in an approval role. But we’re on their goals, not our goals. They don’t get to say what the hell my goals are, they didn’t get elected vice president, I want their input, but we’re going to make the decision at this level. It ain’t a democracy, but now I’m in their world. You want to piss people off, start mucking with their world. We’re not going to do that, you know your operation, you see where we’re going. And then this is the part that freaked me out, this is the part I had to see happen multiple times. Jonathan and Suzette looked like they were ready to quit about an hour ago. It didn’t go their way. They’re totally onboard, and they’re totally coming up with goals.

And it’s as though Jonathan and Suzette were saying, if there was a thought bubble over their head, the thought bubble would say, “Well, it sure as heck isn’t what we would do. But as long as you’re asking for our help, we’ll help you get there.” I’m like, were those the same people that I heard talking in the bathroom and they were still upset? Now all of a sudden they’re offering an objective to help with the strategy? I had to watch this happen multiple times before I realised it didn’t matter that they weren’t agreed with, they know they’re not the boss. People don’t have to have their way, but they have to have their say.

Then this new goal, all of a sudden, now it’s theirs. And they got there. They didn’t get there because you convinced them that you were smarter than they were, they ain’t going to ever believe that. They got there because you invited them. And you said, “Is there an addition to that 100 mile an hour whirlwind that you all manage and we are so grateful that you do. Can you give us one objective?”

Sometimes, the leaders would start coming up with objectives like, “We would never have asked for that.” But seriously, if you can deliver that by June, we’re in a very good position right now. This isn’t change management, this isn’t getting Novocaine before the drilling starts, we just have so much change management. We’re going to drill like hell, but we’re going to numb you up real good before we do. You got tO pull these teams into the breakthrough. This is what we’ve learned. Anyways, sorry, long answer again, Alex.

Chris McChesney:

Of Discipline one. Yeah. The first-

Chris McChesney:

This teases each team then… Yeah, you’re exactly right. I talk through what that could look like in that scenario, and there’ll be a couple of vetoes and a couple of teams that have to try again, but then the executives look, and follow this Alex, they’re not looking at a plan. If you think we’re describing planning, you’re missing it. These are targets.

Chris McChesney:

We’ve translated strategic intent into targets.

Chris McChesney:

Yes. That’s why starting line, finish line, deadline, each one is a single lag measure. It’s not the normal behavior, the normal behavior is to have a strategic idea, get a bunch of smart people in the room, and then start planning, which is just dictating down to the organisation what everybody needs to do. And they’re some stuff on the stroke of the pen side you got to do that with, but not if it requires commitment. The lower you get the closer the targets are to the front line, the more you can start to create engagement and not in some artificial rah-rah way. But now the teams, each team is running its own experiment. So you say, how do you get buy-in? How do you get engagement? Well, don’t solve the damn puzzle for them. It’s their puzzle.

They’re bringing you this gift, they’re bringing you this result, let them figure out the lead measures, that’s discipline two. Let them come up with the scoreboard and how they track it, that’s discipline three. Let them make the weekly commitments on a weekly basis. Your job as a leader is to make this feel like it’s a big freaking deal and we’re putting a spotlight on it.

Chris McChesney:

I’m so glad you said that because you just nailed the whole point of the whole thing. Because if I think it’s about buying in, then I’m going to talk you to death. And if my bladder is stronger than yours at about hour number four, you’re going to start agreeing with me just so you can go to the bathroom.

Chris McChesney:

That-

Chris McChesney:

Very similar.

Chris McChesney:

But let’s go back to what you just said. So step one was, a lot of us are going to agree and commit, some of us are going to disagree and commit, we’re all going to commit, but then watch its step two-

Chris McChesney:

… where I say, “Alex, bring me one.” I’m not assuming, hey, Alex, I’m smarter than you, that’s why I determine strategy, and I’m going to tell you what your objective is. Alex, nobody knows your operation better than you do. I’m not even going to pretend to assume I understand your operation like you do. You understand where we’re trying to go. What can you bring us?

Chris McChesney:

This is the execution capacitor. Yes.

Chris McChesney:

Right. Good.

Chris McChesney:

You got it, you’re describing this really, really well. If you’ve heard what Alex just said, he hit the key points. Which is, one, it’s got to be impactful enough to matter, but it can’t be so big that it’s unachievable. It’s like, if you took achievable and impactful circles, at some point those two things overlap, you want to be in the overlap between those two things. But let’s be clear about something, sometimes that team hasn’t been given direction from above, and sometimes they’re just like, okay, procurement, you tell us. When there is no strategic alignment, what you have to be careful of is that they don’t try and eat the whole elephant with the breakthrough. It’s not the title, it’s a chapter.

Yes. We know overall net savings is why your organisation exists, but that can’t be a focal point because it encompasses everything you do. If it encompasses everything you do it ain’t a focal point. Okay. It’s a multi-year obsolete deal. Yeah. We got to change. Okay. So let’s say more of a multi-year obsolete deals, you’re going to move that $7 million down to three. You could do that. You have $4 million there. You do that, you have more than contributed enough. Can you see what I just said? I had to take you from a title, which is 17 things, half of them out of your control, down to a chapter and you give me the best chapter, that’s cool. But that was done in a vacuum where you weren’t really tied to any strategic thing above. It’s actually a little easier when you’re linking to something else.

Chris McChesney:

You got something to connect to.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Right. You can now start those, they can see, okay. This is what I’ve got to do. Hey, can I share a funny story?

Chris McChesney:

All right. This is a doozy. So you mentioned Marriott and they are like a marquee account. They got me this job, 12 years. Okay. The number two person at Marriott behind Arne Sorenson, a guy named Dave Grissen, he just retired a few months ago. Dave and I have worked together on this for 12 years, tens of thousands of leaders into this process. They are machines. I think it’s in the system. There’s an online web portal that tracks the commitments, I think they’re north of 10 million commitments against-

Chris McChesney:

… guest satisfaction that is recorded. They’ve got a catalogue of lead measures for all different types of results. Marriott’s not good by accident, and for 12 years, every year, Grissen beat the prior year’s guest satisfaction score for 12 years in a row. So he’s legit. Early on in the process, he’s not the number two person at Marriott, he’s a regional VP over the east coast of the United States. He’s got a bunch of GM’s, about 18 general managers and hotel managers in a ballroom and they’re about to start 4 Disciplines. I’m in the room, but it’s his show, I’m just listening. And he says one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, I thought it was awesome. I’ve never forgotten it. He says, “I’ll let you in on a little insider baseball.” He’s saying this through his general managers.

I don’t know if that’s inside baseball tracks, but it’s like the inside scoop. He says, “You want to keep your job at Marriott? Just take care of the whirlwind. Just take care of the day job. Just run the operation, we will never fire you. We’d be crazy to fire you because the person that replaces you might not run the operation.” So everybody got what he said, but everybody’s looking at each other like, this ain’t the whole story, there’s another–

Chris McChesney:

And… But then this is the punch line. He goes, “So if you want to keep your job, just take care of the data. He said, “But if you want to get promoted, bring me one, bring me everything in working order, bring me a rival experience, bring me food and beverage quality.” These are chapters. “And don’t go claiming some result after it happens, call your shot.”

Chris McChesney:

We said this in jest, but then afterwards they got thinking about it, they go, “That was really good.” And they started to institutionalise it. So when you went for a promotion, the first question was, “All right, show us, what was the result you targeted?” All right. At the Bethesda Marriott, we moved a rival experience from a 64 to an 82 in six months. Here’s what we did.”

Chris McChesney:

It’s like a natural law.

Chris McChesney:

Whether we say it or not.

Chris McChesney:

I know. We can do a second episode if you want it.

Chris McChesney:

The quickest way for me to do it, it’s using analogy. Let’s suppose that your wildly important goal was actually weight loss. Now in a business setting, it would never be that, it would be a rival experience, it would be food and beverage quality, it would be net new clients, it would be something like that. Now your lead measures for weight loss or diet and exercise. The parallel for that would be, okay. We’re going to make sure the profile for each guest is accurate five times a day. We’re going to do pre-interviews with 80% of first-time clients. These are lead measures, that’s a whole conversation we haven’t had yet but a lead measure is a bet. So they’re the same kind of bet, like diet and exercise is a bet, that I’m going to lose weight.

The bet is, if I run five miles a week and reduce my calorie input by 400 calories a day, I can maintain this level of weight loss. And I can be at 185 pounds by November 30th. So it’s a similar thing to that. Okay. I haven’t gotten to commitment yet. That’s just the strategic bet. And that strategic bet shows up on a scoreboard that’s Discipline three. So Discipline one is the targeting, that’s what we’ve been talking about the whole time. Discipline two is like diet and exercise, it’s the best. Discipline three is how you see it, and discipline four, these commitments that are made every week. So the best way to do this is to go back to diet and exercise. I’m going to commit to something this week in addition to all that stuff I got to do.

There’s all this stuff in the whirlwind. God, it got me by the throat. It’s got to get done. But in addition to that, what are the one or two things I could do to absolutely ensure I get the miles run and I get the calories right? So I make good on the strategy, I execute on the strategic bet. So I know it’s going to rain next week, all week long. And I hate running in the rain. I know I won’t do it. I’m going to buy the treadmill, I’m pulling the trigger on a treadmill, there is a commitment. You know what? I’m getting a gym membership. There’s a commitment. You know what? I’m calling Sally, because she loves to run in the rain and she will get my butt out all week long.

Whatever it is, to make sure five miles have got to happen next week, no matter what, give me your commitment to make sure it happens, I’m going to go to Whole Foods and buy those ingredients because I’ve been eating like crap lately, I don’t care how much it costs, I’m going to buy that stuff. What should I do this week? Okay. So I’m going to meet with Marcus and Sonia, and I’m going to walk guests to their room with them in order to ensure those leads. What am I going to do to make sure we’re getting the leads right? Now, well here’s what’s interesting about that. It’s just in time strategic planning. So rather than strategic planning happening at the beginning of the year from the people at the top of the organisation, it’s literally happening every week by the people at the bottom of the organisation. You heard the expression force against leverage? The lead measure is the lever, the commitment is the force against the leverage.

So this is what runs the 4 Disciplines, is a little bit of force every single week against each team’s unique leverage points. It’s how Marriott, the biggest hotel company in the world, beat their guests’ set numbers every year for 12 years.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Great. Thank you.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah.

Chris McChesney:

Here’s what it is, there’s a couple of rules around discipline four. So the meeting has to happen at the same time every week. You have to be out of the meeting in 20 minutes, you’re not allowed to discuss whirlwinds during this meeting, each person has to say if they did the thing they committed to do the week before, there’s a little app that’ll show it. I got to review my scoreboard and I got to make commitments for next week. And the commitments are individual and they come from the person, not from the leader.

Chris McChesney:

Sometimes. Yeah, it is. The principle does hold up. So in certain situations, as a leader, you might say, “Alex help me understand why that commitment is going to help our lead measure.” And usually that’s enough for you to go, “Oh, I see where you’re going.”

Chris McChesney:

Yeah. Because the tendency will be for the commitments to start becoming whirlwind objectives that you were going to do anyways. And that’s a nice way to veto it back into play. Sometimes they’ll say, “Well, listen, if I don’t move those racks to the back room, we’ve got way too much clutter, and that’s why we’re scoring so bad on our appearance scores.” Oh, I get it. Okay. Yeah. Move the racks to the back room. I thought that was a whirlwind, but you just made a good argument for moving the racks.

Chris McChesney:

Yeah.

Chris McChesney:

Thanks. I guess my name’s on the chart there, if you can remember Chris McChesney and the letters 4DX, chrismcchesney4dx.com is a great website for all the different things, webinars, videos, YouTube. We got a lot of videos on YouTube on just about every topic that we talked about here. My site, 4dx.com, is a great place to go. It’s a hub resource.

Chris McChesney:

Oh, my God, that’s you, man.

Chris McChesney:

Alex is doing all my podcasts from now on, folks.

Chris McChesney:

Let’s do it. Thanks buddy.