Chris McChesney: The four disciplines of execution

Chris McChesney: The Four Disciplines of Execution

Andy:

You work in talent development. You know that your job has become more important than ever. The problem is there's so much uncertainty and noise out in the business world, and things are changing so fast. It's hard to know where to go and what tools and resources to use to solve your problems. That's why I created the Talent Development Think Tank community as a central place to connect with other L & D professionals so that we can share best practices, share challenges, ask questions, and get solutions that help us improve the way we work. Join today to get instant access to our community of ambitious, helpful talent development professionals who understand your world and can help you solve your problems. Right now, you can join for just $1 for the first two weeks and experience the community for yourself. And because you listen to this podcast, you can take an extra 10% off by using the discount code “HOTSEAT” when you check out. Just go to our website, tdtt.us, and use code “HOTSEAT.” That's tdtt.us. Head on over there. Use the code “HOTSEAT,” and we'll see you inside. Now enjoy the episode.

Narrator:

Welcome to “The Talent Development Hot Seat” with your host Andy Storch. The show is dedicated to helping you develop the most important part of your organization--the people. If you are in HR or talent development, or you just want to learn how to get the best out of your people, then you are in the right place. Each week, Andy shares interviews with talent development professionals, thought leaders, and experts to share best practices, learn about the latest trends, and find out what has been successful in the world of talent development. This podcast is designed to give you what you need to be successful in the world of talent development. Now here's your host, Andy Storch.

Andy:

Welcome to “The Talent Development Hot Seat.” I am your host, Andy Storch,, and I'm excited that you're joining me today for another fantastic interview. Today, I’m speaking with Chris McChesney, who is the co-author of the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals, which is a number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller with more than 500,000 copies sold. Chris and his team are soon releasing a new version and revised edition that teaches leaders how to create lasting organizational change through creating accountability and focusing on the wildly important. Chris is the global practice leader of execution for Franklin Covey and one of the primary developers of The 4 Disciplines of Execution, and for more than a decade, he has led Franklin Covey's ongoing design and development of these principles.

Now, I want a quick note about this interview. We do dive into some subjects from the book, but we also have a great conversation about Chris's career, how he stumbled into the things that he's done, the importance of operating with a growth mindset, and avoiding that fear of failure that holds so many people back. We talk about Chris's kids and my kids and family. It's just a really wonderful conversation. And then we really dig into those four disciplines and how you can get your team to be better at execution and when you should be using these and when you need to get back to business as usual. There are so many good nuggets, so many gold nuggets in this interview--value bombs, if you will. Absolutely love this conversation, and I know you will as well. I'm excited to bring it to you.

Before we dive in, of course, I want to mention that this episode is sponsored by the Talent Development Think Tank Community, which is the number-one place to go for talent development professionals to connect, to learn, to grow, to share best practices, and really accelerate your career success. If you work in talent development, this is the place to be to build your network, to get solutions to your problems, and really accelerate your career success. If you're interested in checking it out, you can find all the information at tdtt.us. That's tdtt.us.

And now, without further ado, here's my interview with Chris McChesney, co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris:

Thank you, Andy. Delighted to be here.

Andy:

So excited to have you on.

Chris, you, of course, are the co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution, which is a wildly successful book. Number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller, more than 500,000 copies sold, and you've got a new version of it coming out soon. And I want to get into some of your background, and, of course, I want to talk about the four disciplines of execution, but you and I were already talking about this, and I was asking you, what's one of the keys to success of that book since I just published my first book, and I'm, of course, trying to learn as much as I can about book publishing and marketing. And you told me a story that I'd love to share, going back to when you first got started working with the great Stephen Covey, right? So I'd love for you to share that.

Chris:

Yeah, thanks, Andy. It's funny, you have these experiences in life and you don't know why you're having them. So I was a fly on the wall when The 7 Habits was becoming a New York Times bestseller, and I was involved in that experience, but the story that I shared with Andy, I had actually gotten on board at the Covey Leadership Center by telling them I needed an internship that didn't really even exist. I made it up, and they weren't paying me. I didn't tell you this part, Andy. The way I even got in the door was by telling them I was writing an article for the local newspaper on up-and-coming companies. I didn't work for the local newspaper, but there's nothing that stops you from writing an article for the newspaper.

Andy:

You could be writing an article.

Chris:

I could be, and I did, and they did publish it. So they kept me from being a liar, but I was so completely just, I have to work for these people. I was a Stephen Covey groupie. But anyway, the funny part of the story is that the week I'm there, it hits number-one on the New York Times bestseller list. And they had just fired their publicist the week before, and they had all this media opportunity, and they're like, well, that kid's from New York. Let's have him call New York. So I'm calling Good Morning America. I'm calling all the media outlets, setting up interviews as an unpaid, fake intern that doesn't even work for the company. That was the very fast start--exactly 30 years ago this month. That was going on, so that's an interesting stroll down amnesia lane.

Andy:

Which is amazing, ‘cause you and I are on video right now, and you look like you're 30 years old.

Chris:

Thank you. It’s those Zoom filters. I got my first grandbaby this year, so I’m getting up there.

Andy:

Congratulations. Yes. So you got thrown into the fire, and a lot of people probably would have run away from that. I mean, I can't call Good Morning America and all that stuff. Obviously, you were already big on taking initiative because you had called them and gotten that internship. How did you dive in and face making those phone calls and making sure that you delivered and you didn't disappoint them because they were now relying on you?

Chris:

You know, it's so funny you're saying this. I've got daughters and sons and sons-in-law that are all in their early twenties, mid twenties, trying to figure out where they go with their careers, and I am doing everything I can to get them to embrace failure. If it doesn't kill you … there are certain types of failure that really hurt and they leave a mark. And you can lose money and you can lose your life doing stupid things--that's not what I'm talking about. But if the only downside is embarrassment, then you're taking a risk, and the only real downside is I'm going to be horribly embarrassed… I made a rule for myself. When that's the situation, I have to do it. And the ability to go in and be able to … When you're a young consultant, I don't know what it was, but these big 30-story buildings just ...

I would stand outside these buildings. I couldn't get myself to walk in. I'm thinking, up there is a group of executives. They come here to this real serious, big building every single day. They're going to know I am a fraud. And I would have this--almost be in the fetal position, on the steps of this big building. And it's like, I can't believe I'm doing this,so terrified and telling myself, look, this is not war. There is no live ammunition. You can do this. And so just being able to put yourself in really hard positions. I'm just every way possible trying to bestow that, yeah, you're going to take some lumps and bumps and everything else, but if you're just willing to put yourself in tough spots, life has a way of rewarding that.

Andy:

Totally. And it's hard to do that as a parent. It goes against all of your instincts to protect your children. I have two kids who are much younger than yours, and I'm trying very hard to raise them with a growth mindset and embrace failure and try different things. But it is difficult, and I'm at the playground, watching parents coddle their kids and protect them all the time. And I'm letting my kids fall off the monkey bars and deal with it. But you look bad as a parent. It's hard, but you know you're doing the right thing because that's going to help them become more successful later.

I'm really glad we were getting into this topic, Chris. Thirty years with Franklin Covey. You've done a lot of really awesome things. What's one of your biggest failures or maybe one of the biggest, most challenging situations you found yourself in over the years?

Chris:

That's a great question, and it's full of them. I'll pick a project, and I'm so certain it's going to work. I'm just like, I know it, and there's eight failures before I even get close to something that looks like success. It's just like, hang around with me. You'll see plenty, and oh, I've had horrible, embarrassing situations.

Andy:

Can you give me an example of one that comes to mind?

Chris:

I did a keynote once. They didn't want it. They didn't want to talk to me afterwards--like wouldn't look at me.

I got one. So circa 1996 and me and this guy I was working with, we had really figured out this great OD model, and we just thought it was the answer to everything. So we've got this executive on board, and then he brought his whole executive team on board, and they're asking about--they just want to buy a training program. But me and my partner, we can't see that. Like we're past that, and we're sending them a fax of basically PowerPoint slides. It's 1996. There's no way to do this electronically without a fax machine. And then I can hear this laughing in the background, and I can hear one of them go, Hey, these guys are giving us a seminar over the phone. And then now they're all laughing. We looked at each other like, we are such idiots. We work for the guy who teaches seek first to understand before being understood, and we just totally violated that principle.

Andy:

You're just teaching them.

Chris:

So he and I, that's one of our favorite stories. Remember what idiots we were? And we’re like, yeah, but you don't know. But if the worst thing that happens is that you get horribly embarrassed, you'll live. You'll survive that.

Andy:

Yeah. As you mentioned, it's not warfare. You'll be all right. Even if you lose your job, you can probably go get another one. It sounds like

Chris:

I would even say, stay away from things that are going to cost you your job, but you'd be surprised how many things people shy away from just because, well, it's going to be a lot of work or it might not go well. Or I could look really stupid. No, that's exactly what opportunity looks like. No one is ever going to pay you. Oh boy, here's a big one. Upfront? No one's going to give you the money commensurate to the work that will be required to pursue an early opportunity. Andy, think about your book. Think about your podcast. Think about that session that you ran. I guarantee like the last big five things that you've done, there was almost no financial remuneration at the beginning of the process. Matter of fact, all you really had was a lot of downside in the form of, oh, if this doesn't work, I’ve really sunk a lot of energy into this thing. People don't realize. That's how opportunity shows up. That’s what it looks like.

Andy:

And I self-published my book, so I spent a lot of money hiring all the right people ...

Chris:

Yes, you did. It wasn’t just energy and your pride and  your name. You sunk money ...

Andy:

Yeah. I put a lot of money, effort, resources, time into building that with the bet that it's going to take off. But what I always remind myself, and this goes back to the growth mindset--I talk about this in my book, and I know you're big on this too--is that if it doesn't work out, at least I'll learn something and then I'll be able to use that for the next project.

Chris:

If I could just bottle what you just said and, oh, this one son of mine. Oh, he’s got so much talent, but he's just so ... always has... He’s always dressed the right way, and he always says the right thing. He's got so many things I didn't have, but he just avoids those potentially. And I'm starting to get them to look at what success really looks like. I've convinced myself that even if I pursue something that fails, that there'll be a side road. There'll be a learning. There'll be something that is--it just somehow is a step to whatever that important achievement ultimately has to be. It's a firm conviction, and it keeps working.

Andy:

Yeah. What is your definition of success, Chris?

Chris:

Wow. You got my head spinning on that one. I really believe that word can be used in different contexts. I think there is micro success. I'm a big fan of--have you read Atomic Habits, James Clear?

Andy:

I haven't read it, but I'm pretty familiar with it. Yeah.

Chris

Yeah. This guy's got it locked in. Clear did his homework. Maybe success--Stephen Covey used to talk about thi--is just the private victory. It's just the ability to do every day what you say you're going to do. Stephen Covey had a routine in the morning that was spiritual meditation. It was intellectual reading, and it was a treadmill. And he felt like he could not be his best self with other people until he had a private victory, that the private victory preceded the public victory. And he had to win that battle internally. It’s a form of success.

Andy:

So private victory being like, I got myself to the gym this morning before ...

Chris:

Yes. He was on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and they turned the mic over to the audience and his kid asked him a question. His kid said, what can a young person do to be highly effective? Somebody probably gave the kid the question. I don't know, but his answer was awesome. His answer was make and keep a promise to yourself every day. Just start to build that internal integrity to yourself. And I've got a white board off to my right, and it's got the weeks. I’ve got little check marks for maintaining certain habits. That's a very fundamental, foundational form of success. I have seven children, and on a much higher plane, I'm running an inventory every day in my head on those seven kids. We could have cast The Breakfast Club.

We have the jock and the nerd, and we've got them all, right? But I'm also a big believer that no success in life can compensate for failure in the home. They've got to stay a priority. And then I think finally, I also believe that you've got certain talents and abilities in this life, and you’ve got a limited amount of time. I think part of the reason we're down here is to see what we can do with what we've been given and to fulfill the measure of our creation.That's just pure stream of consciousness, man. But you asked the deep question.

Andy:

That's good stuff. No success in life can compensate for failure in the home. It's so true. I wrote about a lot of these things in my book, the importance of habits and the importance of thinking about what are your true priorities and then actually living your priorities. So many people say, family's important to me, but they're working 80 hours a week, trying to become CEO of the company, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that--unless you say, family's important to you, but you're never home for dinner. So live the priorities and realize that you have that time. And I'm in that right now with young kids, so I always make sure I set the boundaries that we have family dinner together every night. There's so many things I want to do.

Chris:

Can I give you one? All right. Here's the rule. This is my rule even with my crazy travel. Not every week, but almost every week, there would be some one-on-one time with dad. Each kid. If you go out with them together, they're bouncing off each other. They're playing off each other. They're not connecting with you, and it doesn't have to be a big thing. It doesn't have to be a special thing. Like you've got two or three errands to run, grab one of the kids, and take them with you. We call them dates, and I've always had a little boat, and we've lived close to the lake. Sometimes, we just go out on the lake or we get a bite to eat. And when they're teenagers, it's really funny ‘cause they won't talk to you much for the first 15 minutes, but then it'll all come out. And if you don't create the space, it just won't happen, so I'm a huge believer in one-on-one time with kids.

Andy:

This is so good, and we could just keep going down this rabbit hole. But I want to talk about the book. This is a lot of talent development professionals listening and people who are interested in achieving wildly important goals. And this is all related. It all goes into this. The 4 Disciplines of Execution. How did this book come about?

Chris:

All right. How did the book come about? Okay. Two stories emerged. Okay. So the one story is this great author. Some people will know this name--Ram Charan. In 1999, he wrote a book called Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, but he doesn't really tell you how to do it. He just tells you how important it is about 20 different ways. He and Larry Bossidy write this book. He's consulting Franklin Covey. He’s consulting our CEO. He meets with our executive team. He asks our executive team two questions. He knows he's talking to one of the biggest leadership firms in the country. First question was floated. Do they struggle more with strategy or execution? And we said, execution. What do they study more? They study strategy. And so that, like a trigger, went off.

At that same time, one of our top consultants was told by the head of Norfolk Naval Shipyard who we were doing a lot of process engine re-engineering, and he was told by the head of that, the COO or the commanding officer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, I don't care about any of the process work you're doing right now. If you don't get my goals to the deck plate--that's what they call the frontline--we're going to let you guys go in about two weeks. So he had two weeks to figure out how to get this commanding officer's priorities to the deck plate. And that was going on at the same time as Charam, so there's a convergence of these two things, and it really lit a fire in us.

And that was 2000, so for the last 20 years, we narrowed our focus and we've been fixated on a single problem, and we think it's the biggie. How does a leader drive a strategy that requires a change in people's behavior or a high degree of human engagement? That's the crucible. That's the critical--you sit down with a leader and you talk about all the things that they have to do. More often than not, the thing that's really keeping them up at night is something that really comes down to either a change in behavior, or if these people don't care about this, it ain't going to work. It's not even worth doing. And that's been the primary focus of this work.

Andy:

For over three years now, The Talent Development Hot Seat Podcast has been proudly sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Advantage Performance Group provides creative learning and consulting solutions that equip individuals, teams, and organizations to be the best at what they do. Advantage helps leaders lead, sellers sell, and businesses flourish, and you to be more successful at your job. The Advantage website has great free resources, including this podcast and an amazing webinar series that include topics such as innovation, future storming, inclusion, sales, leadership, and so much more. To get access to all of our free resources as well as overviews of the solutions that Advantage offers, just head on over to advantageperformance.com. That's advantageperformance.com.

Andy:

I learned that during my time in consulting with BTS that--a strategy execution firm--that the best strategies always fail on execution. Everybody spends so much time working on strategy, and then half the time, people aren't even aligned on what the strategy is and it fails. So why do so many initiatives die in organizations? So many things are started. So much time spent on strategy. Why do so many initiatives die?

Chris:

In the first two years, we had identified 12 reasons. We had assessments built on it, and we had missed the big one. So we had 12 root cause reasons execution breaks down, and we didn't have the number-one answer on the board. And it eluded us. The number-one reason that execution is always so much harder than it feels is associated with a very fundamental human tendency towards urgency. I watched it, there was about a two-second delay. If you're listening to this, Andy had about a two-second delay and then he started nodding. He got it.

Andy:

I'm thinking about that Eisenhower matrix of importance and urgency.

Chris:

It's very related to the Eisenhower matrix of urgency versus importance. So what leaders think is if they can convince people that something's important, it will get done, but what we all fail to realize is that importance is not driving this thing. Urgency's driving it. So an individual might agree with your strategy. They might say, yeah, that's absolutely brilliant, boss. I love it,boss. Key to the future, boss. But in the moment, urgency governs. Now, the way that shows up strategically is that most of the energy that's expended in an organization is just expended to maintain the day job, just to keep the doors open, just to perform the daily miracle. Forget doing anything new. We call it the whirlwind, the enormous amount of energy required to maintain the operation today. The whirlwind governs. And so when you tell people about the new strategy--if we can just convince them, if we can just sell them--90% of the time you sold them. They're not arguing with you, but you keep thinking, but that's what you're good at that--they just go back to the whirlwind. Weeks are going by, and you're not getting any closer to the priority. Nobody gets a pass on this one. And so here's the converse of this. No one executes on strategy without the ability to put real energy towards non-urgent activity. You don't have the discipline to put real, thoughtful, deliberate energy against stuff that is not on fire. You are out of the game, friend. You might be one heck of a firefighter.

Andy:

And that means ignoring all the emails and things that are coming your way every day.

Chris:

There's crap on fire while you're doing the other stuff. And you know. Everybody's been there. This is the most important project of the year I’m working on, but you know down the hall, there's a fire burning, and you're just itching to put it out. So really, one of the ways to look at the four disciplines is it's a way to put deliberate energy against non-urgent strategic priority. And it is the Eisenhower. It's the second quadrant in Eisenhower's four boxes.

Andy:

Important non-urgent quadrant.

Chris:

Important, non-urgent, man. That is the strategic box.

Andy:

Yeah. So, so important. And I think Covey put that in the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Chris:

He hangs all of habit three on that matrix.

Andy:

Hmm. Okay. So what are the four disciplines?

Chris:

All right. So in a nutshell, the first one is the ability to narrow the focus, and we call it focus on the wildly important. And it's the ability to get clear in your head the difference between the day job and that one thing that has to change. So II want to say this. I'll give you one quote on this one. He just retired this year, Dave Grissen, one of our favorite leaders. Number-two guy at Marriott. He wasn't a number-two guy when we met him 12 years ago. He had a meteoric career at Marriott, and Dave was the champion of four disciplines. Over a thousand properties, ran this methodology in North and South America at Marriott. I watched Dave kick off a group of general managers in this approach. And he said the most interesting thing. He’s talking to a group of these hotel managers. General managers were a step up.

He said, you want to keep your jobs at Marriott? So you want to never be fired? Just take care of the day job. Just manage the business. We will never fire you. And they're thinking, where's he going with this? He's like, I'm serious. We'd be crazy. If we let you go, the next person may not be able to hold down the fort. So he says, you want to keep your job, just maintain the whirlwind. Just maintain the day job. And there was this pause, and everybody knew, okay, here comes the other shoe. And he goes, but if you want to get promoted, give me one. Give me a result. Call your shot. Give me an improvement in arrival experience. Give me an improvement in event satisfaction. Give me an improvement in everything in working order, right?

So he's making this clarification. Yeah. You want to keep your job, fine. Take care of the day job. That's great. You want to get promoted? Give me one. Bring me a result, and so discipline one is all about defining, what's that? In addition to my day job, what's that one result, and, can I put it in the form of a target, starting line, finish line, deadline? That's the first discipline.

Second discipline, act on the lead measure. These targets that we create in the first discipline, we call WIGS, or wildly important goals, and they're always synonymous with a metric. And that metric is a lag measure or a lag indicator. It's after the fact. It's results measures. People in manufacturing know that's right. The output metrics, results measures, are lagging metrics. Lead measures are things that we can influence directly, activities, or small outcomes that we can directly affect and we can track and we can measure.

And the easiest way people get this as weight loss. If the pounds--if the drop in pounds or the lag measure, the lead measure is diet and exercise. Or the number of executive presentations to new accounts would be the lead and the lag, or compliance to project management standards for bringing in projects on time. Or one-on-one time with phone reps to improve customer service response rates.

Andy:

We've got to measure it.

Chris:

Yeah. Lead measure. What do I have now? Here's the two magic characteristics of a lead measure is that they're predictive. You believe they're predictive of an outcome that you need, number one. And number two, directly influenceable by the team. So diet and exercise. I'm not, but I could, if I put energy towards it, I could get those. It would give me, it would give me the outcome that I wanted. So that's the second discipline.

And it's funny, this stuff sounds so easy until people go to do it. The third discipline is keep a compelling scoreboard--that we don't see the behavior change until it goes game on, like just having a really compelling hypothesis. We think if we did this, we think if we booked really great guests, we'd see a really great output. Well, what exactly is that output and what defines what's a really great guest and where's the tracking system? When do I actually see it? And physical scoreboards, we've actually gone with apps. So the 4DX OS app is designed to get that lead lag measures rate in the palm of people's hands. Right now, that's really valuable real estate.

It's simple. It's highly visible. It's got lead and lag measures and tells us immediately, are we winning or losing? But what we've seen is until that bet, that hypothesis takes physical form, we don't have it.

And then finally last, and this is the fourth discipline, is the discipline of execution. We call it, create a cadence of accountability. And it's where we make commitments. Team members that own a scoreboard make commitments to each other every week, very short meeting of what we're going to do to make sure the lead measure happens. Let's go back to weight loss. If my lead measures are around diet and exercise, my commitment might be all right, it's going to rain all next week. I hate running in the rain. I'm going to get the gym membership. I'm going to get the treadmill. All right, I've got to go. I've been eating junk for the last two weeks. I've got some great recipes. On Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to go to Whole Foods, and I don't care what they cost. I'm going to buy those ingredients. What have I got to do to make sure that the lead measures happen? And t's interesting. These commitments inevitably fit in that second quadrant on Eisenhower's matrix. They're never on their own. They would never be urgent. But by having that commitment to one another, that cadence of accountability, it drives people and we're not ordering them. We're not telling them. We're actually pulling it, and they're creating commitments that drive the lead measures. And that's really where we're getting our change in behavior. And then they start owning the scoreboard. And then it's very simple little behaviors. The little disciplines have this lovely little side benefit in addition to achieving the goal.

Turns out there's almost always a corresponding pop and engagement associated with these disciplines. We knew it was happening, but we didn't understand it for about five years. And we picked up a book by Patrick Lencioni called Three Signs of a Miserable Job and Lencioni brilliantly articulates why what we were doing with the disciplines was causing a jump in engagement. And then I'll give you another one. There was an article in Harvard Business Review called “The Power of Small Wins.” And they referenced this research that was done in the ‘60s, by a guy I had heard of--I'd studied him in school--named Frederick Herzberg. And Herzberg said, look, there's about a dozen reasons people will quit you. Don't confuse an absence of turnover for actual engagement.

You can go to work. You may need to go to work on decreasing turnover. And that may be very important, but don't think that a decrease in turnover is the same thing as actual engagement. There's a dozen reasons people will quit. I don't like my pay. I don't like my money. I don't have a best friend at work. My boss doesn't recognize... There's a whole bunch of reasons they'll leave you. But he said there's fundamentally only two things that will truly engage a person at work. Number one, am I winning? Am I making progress? Not on everything--on something. Is there some area where I'm making progress, and second does that thing matter?

It's interesting. I can be at a conference with a thousand participants, and this is my little thing I like to do. This is a fun party trick, and I'll break them and I'll say, okay, everybody turn to your neighbor. Tell your neighbor where you were in your career when you were most lit up. Most people can get here. What was the day you remember you were on fire? You couldn't wait to get to work. At work. Go. Talk. Just tell them where you were. So everybody is this huge rumble Now switch. The other person. You tell them. Doing that with a thousand people's a bear. You get them all back and say, okay. And then you list all the things that weren't going on. You may have liked your work conditions. You may not have. You may have not even liked your boss. And people are like, yeah, I, I didn't like her. I didn't like him. That's the whole “people don't quit a job,  they quit a boss.” Yeah. We know, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about engagement. We're not talking about turnover.

And then, and then we go, okay, here are the two things. Raise your hand if you felt like you were winning, you were making progress and all that. Keep your hands up. If that thing felt like it mattered, can you get a room full of people with their hands up? And it's just cool. And it's like, okay,I gotta give credit. That's Herzberg’s. That's the research that was done in the 1960s. And it's really overlooked research, but we sort of stumbled into this. Teams would use the discipline, even in brutal situations, to create something that felt like a winnable game. So that was the bonus that we got.

Andy:

I love this. We’ve got to narrow the focus down to the important things we want to work on. We've got to act on the lead measures and be able to influence that and be able to measure that. Number three, we've got to have a scoreboard, so we've got to measure it. What gets measured gets done. And number four, we've got to have accountability, which is absolutely huge. I think that's the most important one.

Chris:

That's the real execution.

Andy:

We're talking about teams. I think about most of my accomplishments even as a solo entrepreneur and podcaster, author, it's all come down to accountability. Being in mastermind groups or having accountability partners or buddies and knowing that when all those urgent requests are coming in all day long, the emails and texts or whatever, I told so-and-so I was going to get this thing done by tomorrow or next week or whatever. So I've got to sit down and make sure I get this done because I made that commitment, and I want to keep making progress. I want to keep winning on something that's meaningful, and that keeps me engaged and gets me excited about the work that I'm doing. It all comes together.

Chris:

Yeah. And the tricky part about this is I'm going to tell you not to use this on 80% of what you do. So if this is a treatment, this is heavy medicine. So a narrow focus, put most things that you do in the day job category in your brain. And start by just applying that treatment to just one thing because the disciplines are a lot harder than they sound. In the second edition of the book we make that point much clearer.

Andy:

What gets in the way? What’s the most common things that get in the way or the future roadblocks, I think you write about, to execution?

Chris:

Complexity is a real killer of execution. Execution loves simplicity and transparency, and execution does not like complexity. And so the discipline to stay focused is huge. The day job is ... it's really funny. It's like the thing that the four disciplines are designed to do to get through those things went out, and then just the lack of discipline. These are not the four good ideas of execution. These are the four disciplines of execution, right? So it forces, and none of us are born disciplined. It forces us small disciplines, and I think those are … and just the willingness, the willingness to emotionally, Andy, goes back to what we were talking about before. The willingness to put real energy towards something that's not a guarantee. I'm going to really double down on a critical priority, and there's no guarantee it's gonna work.

Andy:

Going back and taking those risks or being willing to take risks. You can fail.

Chris:

Yeah. And it was like the leaders that were willing to just go in on a strategic position. I got a quote for you. You're familiar with Orlando. You're familiar with Chick-fil-A.

Andy:

Yeah, from up by you in Atlanta.

Chris:

Yeah. Well, 20 years ago when we were starting, their VP of Ops, Tim Tassopoulos, who's now the president at Chick-fil-A, he said something that really haunted us and stayed with us. And he was very good. We knew this guy was on an execution level, was about as good as they get. And he said, the first thing I want to know when I meet a new leader, he said, I want to know where that leader is applying disproportionate energy. I don't want to hear the four or five things. I want to know what's the big bet. What did they all in on? And he says, once I know that, if there is something, that tells me a lot, and then once I get into their head on that, I know a lot about that leader and where that leader is at. And so I think that, and maybe some other things, really started to influence the way we would use the disciplines, not as a macro operating system--the day job already does that--but as a way to break the bottlenecks in execution.

Andy :

So good. All right. So as we're wrapping things up, I'm thinking about a lot of our listeners work on teams, run teams, are developing people in organizations and helping teams set up and looking for ways to help them accelerate success and execute more. How can we instill more accountability and use these to really get things done? How can we start working on this today?

Chris:

Think about three tracks around, or if you organize work into three categories, one category is all the things that we can do, just because the boss said. We're going to hire that person. We're going to discontinue that product. These are strategic, and we become a stroke of the pen. We're going to buy that equipment. Once the decision is made, stuff's going to happen. A good chunk of the plan will fit in that category. There's another category we talked about called the day job, which is all the stuff that has to happen everyday, just to keep the basic minimum standards necessary to maintain the operation today, and a lot of the stuff that you're responsible for can be organized between those two areas. So if you can organize that even just right down at the team level ...

Andy:

And most people spend all their time in those two areas.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah. Right. And then recognize, no, there's a little space in between for a breakthrough. Okay. The disciplines are for the breakthrough. And so if you said, okay, when it comes to the breakthrough, we're going to play by a new set of rules just around the breakthrough. We're not going to change everything we're doing. We're going to create that scoreboard. And we're going to have the lead measures. We're going to meet every week. And every member of the team is going to come up with something they're going to do to push the breakthrough. And just the very fact that we're giving it this special treatment tends to elevate the importance of something that isn't inherently urgent. The fact that that scoreboard, the fact that we meet on it, and the fact that we all have to come up with our own commitment, the fact that it's very uncomfortable if we get in that meeting the next week, and we didn't do the one thing we said we were going to do, and we were the one that came up with the one thing.

And we treat it like a high-stakes game. What we've learned is you can do that around one thing without having to move the whole culture of the team. This acts like a cultural trim tab on a rudder. And you start to develop, just in that one area, you start to develop higher levels of accountability, which sounds like, yeah, I'm going to do the thing I said, even if life gets crazy. I'm not going to use, hey, things got crazy, as an excuse. I'm going to get it. And we're going to learn cause-and-effect relationships. And we're going to, two months, we're going to throw out our lead measures, and we’re going to come up with new ones ‘cause those weren't working and we always thought they would. It's a little like a trial-and-error laboratory. But the key has always been don't try and do it on everything. Keeping those three channels separate in your mind seems to make this whole thing a little more accessible.

Andy:

Yeah. Very important. I like that. Chris, you work with a lot of people in the talent development world. Is there a trend that you've been following that you think is really interesting right now in talent development, people development?

Chris:

It’s interesting. Yeah. I think so. I think I can call it a trend. We've always been aware of it, but I think it's bigger now, and it's those people in talent development that are really ready to reach out to their line partners and customers. I used the word line that, in talent development, we are supporting all the various line functions of the organization in a variety of ways, the movement towards, all right, I'm going to get off my own agenda. I mean, I've got my own opinions about what I think this organization needs to be doing and who we need to be hiring and all that. I'm just gonna drop my own agenda, and I'm really gonna get into the head of the business leaders. I'm really gonna find out what are the gaps they're trying to close and be willing to learn and listen, and really partner with my customers and see the business unit leaders in the organization as customers. A lot will complain, I don't have a seat at the strategy table. I don't have a seat at the planning table. I know. It's gotta be earned. And what you'll find, almost without exception, is when a leader realizes that a really smart talent development person is really working for them and really on their agenda and really in their heads, you become their best friend really, really fast because talent eats strategy for breakfast and they know this.

Andy:

The people are going to get things done. When it comes down to it, you can lay out all the strategy, have the systems, the processes, but strategy execution comes down to people.

Chris:

And whenthat, and, not to view the organization with too broad a brush, but really dial it in to specific, where are those specific business unit leaders in your organization that have disproportionate poll and influence and really need help? In my mind, that's a really important trend. And I think because of the pandemic, so many organizations have to pivot right now, and and they have to pivot either for opportunity or for survival or because their customers are pivoting, but everybody's moving. And they're moving with a group of people who are pretty much tapped out as far as how much change they can handle in their lives right now. So it's this really interesting dynamic. So talent development leaders, the closer you can get to the business side of the business at a time like this, I believe it will be, with few exceptions, well-received.

Andy:

I'm a big fan of that. We recently had a call inside of the Talent Development Think Tank Community I run. We talked all about how HR can become more strategic and be part of the business. I think that's one of the biggest steps that people can take in talent development to help their cause, help the organization, help their own career success. Speaking of that, last question for you, Chris. For anybody listening who is looking for ways to accelerate their own career success, what's one more piece of advice you would give?

Chris:

All right. So let's go full circle and then build off the last question as well. Reach out to that really scary leader in the organization you've always been afraid of, who you think doesn’t like you. That's exactly what we're talking about. That's the kind of risk I'm talking about, where you put yourself out there and you're going to take your lumps and you know what I mean? You put your pride on the line and build a relationship. Do something. Don't hide in your comfort zone,. Put your chin out there for a critical stakeholder in the organization, and take that risk and see.

Andy:

Yeah. I love that. Going full circle right back to the beginning. Be willing to take chances, take risks, have those difficult conversations, reach out to people, build your network, be willing to fail. The most successful people that we admire are people who have been willing to take chances and fail along the way and have come out incredibly successful as a result. All right. The book is The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals, new edition coming out soon. Chris, where can people go to find out more about the book and all the work that you do?

Chris:

Amazon for the book, or if they're interested in using me for a keynote, virtual or live, chrismcchesney4dx.com will give you all the information.

Andy:

I love it. And we'll put all the notes in our show notes, Chris. This has been awesome. Really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Chris:

Thoroughly. Yeah. You are definitely one of the better podcast interviewers. This was really fun.

Andy :

I'll take that. We're going to put that quote on our website right there.

Chris:

Yeah, you go right ahead. You guys do an awesome job. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks Andy.

Andy:

Thanks again for listening to the Talent Development Hot Seat. If you haven't already, we'd love for you to leave us a rating and review on iTunes to help other people find the show. And as always, you can find all of our episodes and tons of free resources on our website, talentdevelopmenthotseat.com. Thank you again and take care.

Connect with Andy Storch here:

https://andystorch.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andystorch/

https://tdtt.us/

Connect with Chris McChesney:

https://www.chrismcchesney4dx.com/

https://amzn.to/3gbdKqA