Welcome to another addition of what my friend John calls “I read it so you don’t have to”! 🙂
I’m reading “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” right now. The subtitle is “Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals.” The authors call these “WIGS” for short.
While I’m just a few chapters in, it’s a powerful framework for executing visions, dreams, and strategies that most people and organizations never consider.
I’m sure I’ll have much more to share in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to focus on Discipline #1 – Focus on the Wildly Important.
In this section, the authors share how important it is to identify “breakthrough goals,” which are those that truly have the power to change things in your life and business.
They state that in their work with thousands of leaders and organizations over the past few decades, most people get caught up in the “whirlwind” of daily tasks and rarely focus on the things that matter most.
They recommend a ratio of 80/20 where you focus 80% of your time on the urgent matters of the day, but give 20% of your time to your wildly important goals.
It’s so easy to get trapped chasing many “rabbits” daily while neglecting things are are “wildly important” which will truly make a significant difference.
While they go into much greater detail about this topic in the book, I wanted to plant the seed in your mind to think about ONE goal that, if executed, could be a game-changer for your life, team, or business.
Once you have that defined, block at least 20% of your time to work on that with excellence and dedication. You’ll still need to address the daily “fires,” but you’ll now also be able to make exponential improvements by focusing a good portion of your time on your Wildly Important Goal.
Then, once you’ve accomplished this goal, pick ONE more.
If you have a list of several WIGS, prioritize them and chip away one at a time. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can knock out several at once. It just won’t happen amidst the daily chaos.
A more advanced approach addressed in the book is that you can have ONE organizational WIG that drives individual team or department WIGS that feed the main one. With this approach, each team or department defines its ONE WIG to help accomplish the overall company WIG.
Give this some thought this week and see what you come up with. I’m confident that even minimal progress toward this approach can make a big difference for you and your team.
Until next time, make today GREAT!
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