Book Review: The 4 Disciplines of Execution

The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution are rules for translating strategy into action at any level of the organization.  What I liked about the book is that it incorporates principles of focusing on what’s most important, using leverage, 80-20, commitment and follow-up.  The authors promote narrowing a company’s focus to a few Wildly Important Goals at a time, and then applying a disciplined process of execution.   

One really interesting concept is that of setting leading measures to reach the goal.  We tend to measure what has happened in the past, instead of what we need to do in order to make something happen.  Leading measures define small outcomes and behaviours that you want to team to perform. These are measurable, within the team’s control, and predictive of success in reaching the goal. 

As the name suggests, these results can be measured objectively and posted so that the members of the team can see how well they are doing in moving toward the results. 

Take a look for yourself.  I found this book an interesting read.