Four Disciplines Of Execution Quotes

Second, there is no substitute for discipline. No amount of intellectual prowess or personal charisma can make up for an inability to identify a few simple things and stick to them over time.

Christensen wrote for a book titled The 4 Disciplines of Execution, which built on extensive consulting case studies to describe four “disciplines” (abbreviated, 4DX) for helping companies successfully implement high-level strategies. What struck me as I read was that this gap between what and how was relevant to my personal quest to spend more time working deeply.

organizational health is often neglected because it involves facing realities of human behavior that even the most committed executive is tempted to avoid. It requires levels of discipline and courage that only a truly extraordinary executive is willing to embrace.

From the moment he began using the disciplines on his yellow sheet, Rich was continually narrowing the scope of his responsibilities to a core set of activities. One of the areas that he most adamantly insisted on being involved in, and which had a profound connection to each of the four disciplines, was the hiring of new employees.

The Duke team identified four basic groups of competencies: functional skills, business skills, management skills, and leadership skills.

We break commitments to ourselves with embarrassing regularity. How can someone trying to lose weight binge on an entire pint of ice cream before bed? How can even the most disciplined of executives fail to make 30 minutes of time per week for exercise? How can someone whose marriage depends on quitting smoking pick up a cigarette? Simple: logic fails. If you were to summarize the last 100 years of behavioral psychology in two words, that would be the takeaway. Fortunately, knowing this, it is possible to engineer compliance. Pulling from both new and often-neglected data, including photographic research and auctions, there are four principles of failure-proofing behavior. Think of them as insurance against the weaknesses of human nature—your weaknesses, my weaknesses, our weaknesses: 1. Make it conscious. 2. Make it a game. 3. Make it competitive. 4. Make it small and temporary.

Their archrival, Atropia, is nowhere near as fit, fast, or disciplined, and every four years, when the teams meet in the qualifying rounds of the World Cup, Krasnovian hopes run high. Usually around minute five, however, something happens that diverges from any of Coach T’s 712 plans. The Krasnovians continue to execute their immaculate choreography, but they are kicking at the air and passing to nobody. The Atropians, without a plan but with awareness of the entire field, run circles around them. After each loss, Coach T goes back and devises another plan, and by the next match, he has a flawless solution to the expired Atropian plays.

Building a cohesive leadership team is the most critical of the four disciplines because it enables the other three. It is also the most elusive because it requires considerable interpersonal commitment from an executive team and its leader.

DISCIPLINE FOUR: REINFORCE ORGANIZATIONAL CLARITY THROUGH HUMAN SYSTEMS.

In addition to holding MRRs for individual businesses, I gathered my staff together each year to do a single, comprehensive MRR covering all the top management in the company across businesses and disciplines—around four hundred people in total. We discussed each of these leaders one by one. During this conversation, our functional leaders had an opportunity to comment on the performance of leaders in the business units, while our business leaders could comment on how well executives within the functional organizations were doing. This exchange broke down the silos between businesses and corporate functions that usually exist inside organizations, reinforcing the idea that we all needed to work together and were all responsible to one another. No longer could a functional leader say, “Just leave me alone to control my own organization.” Others across the organization would have a chance to weigh in—and they would take it.