Since the start of 2022, Mention Me has applied the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) as our company execution framework - how we deliver against our goals. It’s disarmingly simple and already proving valuable. But it’s also challenging and generating lots of learning. As we continue to learn what it takes to make it successful, we’ll be sharing our findings in this new blog series.
Before we dive into that though, let’s take a look at what 4DX is.
What is 4DX?
As the name might give away, the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is an execution system. It first rose to prominence in Chris McChesney’s best-selling book of the same name (co-authored by Jim Huling and Sean Covey).
The theory makes great sense, and the four disciplines are simple – but that’s not to say applying them is easy.
Here’s a quick primer on the 4 disciplines of execution:
1. Focus on the Wildly Important
Decide on the fewest number of important goals you need to achieve over a specific time frame and state them as numerical SMART goals. For example: “move measure X from Y to Z by the end of Q1”. These might be expressed hierarchically with an overall “WIN”, several “MOVES” to get to the WIN and each with some component CHALLENGES (or “wildly important goals” (WIGs)) to make the moves.
2. Act on the Lead Measures
Allocate a team to each Wildly Important Goal (WIG) and have them pick 2 or 3 leading indicators of success (lead measures) which are predictive of the WIG being achieved (e.g. “produce n pieces of collateral”, “deliver n pitches” or “review n CVs”). Find ways to set targets and measure progress against them.
3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
Each team puts their WIG and lead measures on a scoreboard, so everyone knows how they’re doing – and when they need to push harder.
4. Create a Cadence of Accountability
Each WIG team has a weekly meeting where each member accounts for their commitments over the past week, makes new commitments for the week ahead, and reflects on overall progress and potential obstacles.
As an example:
WIN: Have a YoY growth rate of >80% by the end of the year
MOVE 1: Deliver product upsell revenue of £xM by end of year
WIG 1: Deliver product Y which meets client need Z by end of Q2
(Editor's note: we've used WIN, MOVE and WIG instead of the WAR, BATTLE and WIG in the book as we disliked the overtly military language).
Want to learn more about 4DX and how it works? We highly recommend checking out the book ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’.
Why Mention Me is applying 4DX
Like many scaling businesses, we’ve historically used Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to make sure we're hitting our ambitious growth targets at Mention Me. While this has been good for showing how each team contributes towards the company objectives, it didn’t help us get better at actually hitting our goals. We’d often be left with a sea of green turning to red and amber in status meetings at the end of a quarter. And we’d lack the tools to be able to do much about it earlier.
4DX is alarmingly effective because it helps define your goals and provides a method for systematically achieving them (or at least soon shows you if you’re off course).
There’s a steely core to it – once you set out to achieve a wildly important goal, the team is on the hook to deliver against it. When the chips are down: “What are we going to do differently to get back on track?”
It also helps to somewhat tame the “Whirlwind” (everything else that has to happen to keep the business running). It does this by surfacing difficult trade-offs around priorities; something that’s much easier to do when everyone has a single Wildly Important Goal.
Our 4DX win is on
As a business, we now have our overarching WIN that we want to achieve. We’ve also defined the 7 MOVES that must be made to make the WIN and the 15 “Wildly Important Goals” that will allow us to make those MOVES.
As we continue along the learning curve of 4DX, we’ll reflect on the lessons (and challenges) our Product and Engineering teams have encountered so far.
Ready to get stuck in? Check out part 1 here.
And if you want to find out what it's really like working with 4DX, we're recruiting.
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