WIGs, Scoreboards and Tracking Progress
Now that you are clear on your proximate objective and your guiding policies, you will be in a position to define the wildly important goals (WIGs from Covey et al’s “Four Disciplines of Execution”) that must be achieved in order to achieve the proximate objective. Once again, your purpose is to create focus. You cannot focus on a shopping list of goals – so they must be prioritised in order of importance, and tackled in that order, with no more than 3 WIGs being on the front burner at any one time. This means that you know what your priorities are. I say that if you have 10 priorities, then you don’t know what your priorities are. And if you don’t know what your priorities are, how on earth will your people be able to determine their own priorities? For each WIG, you need to define the following:
i. Motivating (Fun and Clear) – the team has to like the Scoreboard
ii. Simple (the 5 sec rule says that you must be able to understand what the scoreboard is saying in 5 seconds)
iii. Updatable (at least twice a week)
iv. Complete (includes lead and lag measurements)
v. Drives the team
vi. Facilitates planning and course corrections
The scoreboard is an instrument which should tell you if you are tracking the correct lead measures (activities) and if these are producing the results (lag measures) you are looking for. If performance against the lead measures is right but you are not achieving the desired results, then you can ask the following:
- Are we doing enough of the lead activities?
- Are they the right lead activities?
- Are we doing those lead activities in the right way?
- What do we need to change or do differently?
b. The team needs to decide on the following:
i. What are the key disciplines (habits/routines) that we must put in place to ensure the execution of our strategy?
ii. How often will we review progress? (not less than fortnightly, and weekly is even better)
iii. How will you account to each other for your delivery on your strategic objectives? For example, have a 20 min weekly meeting in which:
- Each person reports on “What did I do last week to progress the strategy?”
- The team reviews the Scoreboard, focusing on the lead measures and doing just in time planning and course corrections.
- Each person outlines “What are the 2 to 3 things I can accomplish in the coming week to have the greatest impact on the Scoreboard?”
These 8 articles have really been an overview of the strategic process and I trust they have been useful. I cannot stress enough that strategy is a process and not an event. What’s more, it is a learning process. It is a big experiment based on the team’s hypothesis about what will take it to the Promised Land. This means that you will get some things right and some things wrong, and when you get things wrong you need to change and correct course, so review must be an integral part of the strategic process. In addition to the weekly reviews suggested above, it is important to do more in depth reviews where you ask the following 6 questions:
In this way you keep your strategy alive and on track. You pick up problems quickly and correct course early. In addition, you give the team an opportunity to ensure that they are making progress – and the sense that we are making progress against worthwhile objectives is what keeps us all excited and engaged.
I hope you have enjoyed this series of articles.
Now that you are clear on your proximate objective and your guiding policies, you will be in a position to define the wildly important goals (WIGs from Covey et al’s “Four Disciplines of Execution”) that must be achieved in order to achieve the proximate objective. Once again, your purpose is to create focus. You cannot focus on a shopping list of goals – so they must be prioritised in order of importance, and tackled in that order, with no more than 3 WIGs being on the front burner at any one time. This means that you know what your priorities are. I say that if you have 10 priorities, then you don’t know what your priorities are. And if you don’t know what your priorities are, how on earth will your people be able to determine their own priorities? For each WIG, you need to define the following:
- Your Lead measures: The activities that will produce the required outcome and that can be influenced by the individual;
- Lag measures – the measures you don’t achieve if you don’t implement the required activities.
- Now you need to decide on how the team will account to each other for progress against the WIGs. This is happens in two parts:
i. Motivating (Fun and Clear) – the team has to like the Scoreboard
ii. Simple (the 5 sec rule says that you must be able to understand what the scoreboard is saying in 5 seconds)
iii. Updatable (at least twice a week)
iv. Complete (includes lead and lag measurements)
v. Drives the team
vi. Facilitates planning and course corrections
The scoreboard is an instrument which should tell you if you are tracking the correct lead measures (activities) and if these are producing the results (lag measures) you are looking for. If performance against the lead measures is right but you are not achieving the desired results, then you can ask the following:
- Are we doing enough of the lead activities?
- Are they the right lead activities?
- Are we doing those lead activities in the right way?
- What do we need to change or do differently?
b. The team needs to decide on the following:
i. What are the key disciplines (habits/routines) that we must put in place to ensure the execution of our strategy?
ii. How often will we review progress? (not less than fortnightly, and weekly is even better)
iii. How will you account to each other for your delivery on your strategic objectives? For example, have a 20 min weekly meeting in which:
- Each person reports on “What did I do last week to progress the strategy?”
- The team reviews the Scoreboard, focusing on the lead measures and doing just in time planning and course corrections.
- Each person outlines “What are the 2 to 3 things I can accomplish in the coming week to have the greatest impact on the Scoreboard?”
These 8 articles have really been an overview of the strategic process and I trust they have been useful. I cannot stress enough that strategy is a process and not an event. What’s more, it is a learning process. It is a big experiment based on the team’s hypothesis about what will take it to the Promised Land. This means that you will get some things right and some things wrong, and when you get things wrong you need to change and correct course, so review must be an integral part of the strategic process. In addition to the weekly reviews suggested above, it is important to do more in depth reviews where you ask the following 6 questions:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- What are we actually achieving?
- What are we doing well/getting right?
- What are we not doing well/getting right?
- What have we learned?
- What do we need to change going forward?
In this way you keep your strategy alive and on track. You pick up problems quickly and correct course early. In addition, you give the team an opportunity to ensure that they are making progress – and the sense that we are making progress against worthwhile objectives is what keeps us all excited and engaged.
I hope you have enjoyed this series of articles.
