What is a Wildly Important Goal?
A Wildly Important Goal is your most important objective. An objective that won’t be reached unless it gets special attention. That means by conducting your normal course of business you won’t make it happen. The whitewater caused by the demands of Business as Usual will not cut it.
Do you have a Wildly Important Goal?
Your goal may be to grow your turnover from $3M to $4M or to reduce costs by 25%. Or if it is really a Wildly Important Goal you may wish to achieve BOTH.
Now you have a Wildly Important Goal. “How do I make it happen?” you may ask.
The urgency of Business as Usual (BAU) will always challenge your Wildly Important Goal. To overcome the blockages of BAU you need a planned methodology to win the game.
Use the 4 Disciplines approach.
Discipline 1 – Focus on the Wildly Important
Execution starts with Focus.
Too many competing priorities diminishes a leaders Focus. This is a widespread challenge, many leaders face this same challenge.
Narrowing your focus is not about narrowing your whitewater, being your business as usual, although over time attention to your wildly important goals might have that effect.
Human beings are hardwired to do one thing and do that one thing well.
Your wildly important goal needs your full attention, it needs to be that one thing.
Discipline 2 – Act on the Lead Measures
Discipline Two is about providing great energy to the activities that drive your lead measures. The objective is the lag measure, the result, and that is the wildly important goal.
The lead measures drive the lag measures by leverage.
Lead measures are measures of short-term activities. Activities that are designed to be enacted in the coming week. These activities are responsive to changing conditions and circumstances. They become a just in time process to focus on the activities required to achieve your wildly important goal.
Lead measures are predictive. If a lead measure is undertaken, the lag measure will be impacted. The lead measure is influenceable, the team can make a lead measure happen.
Discipline 3 – Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
Everybody needs to know the score, to know if they are winning or losing. People play the game differently if they know the score.
If the lead and lag measures are not captured and displayed on a scoreboard they will disappear into the Whitewater of business as usual. The urgent will overcome the important.
Discipline 4 – Create a Cadence of Accountability
Have your team meet frequently and regularly, in wildly important goal sessions, at which each team member makes personal commitments to drive the lead measures.
What is the session?
Because a wildly important goal session might sound like just another quick meeting, you might not see what it is about.
You’re about to see that the rhythm of accountability requires real skill and a degree of precision if you want your team to perform at the highest level.
Act on the described disciplines and your Wildly Important Goal is now achievable, being improved turn over and/or reduced cost, or whatever.