NEW DELHI, Feb 19: Facing a problem of executing a strategy? A group of four executives has come out with a set of principles that they claim enables leaders to address such issues and produce extraordinary results.
Sean Covey, Chris McChesney, Jim Huling and Rajan Kaicker of the Franklin Covey organisation spent more than a decade studying why execution so often fails, what can be done to fix it, and what it takes to achieve wildly important goals. The result of their findings is a new book “The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Make Your Wildly Important Goals Happen”, published by Simon & Schuster and written with a South Asian perspective.
“The book ‘The 4 Disciplines Of Execution (4DX)’ is not theory. It is a proven set of practices that have been tested and refined by hundreds of organisations and thousands of teams over many years. When a company or an individual adheres to these disciplines, they achieve superb results – regardless of the goal,” says Kaicker.
The four disciplines of execution are sequential and interdependent – focusing on the wildly important goals; acting on the lead measures; keeping a compelling scoreboard; and creating a cadence of accountability.
“The 4DX represents a new way of thinking and working that is essential to thriving in today’s competitive climate. Simply put, this is one that no business leader can afford to miss,” Kaicker, Executive Chairman and Managing Director Franklin Covey India & South Asia, told PTI.
He says this book is different from most self-help titles which focus only on theory.
“With ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’, you are not experimenting with an interesting theory; you are implementing a set of proven practices that meet that challenge successfully every time as well a globally validated process that has been rolled out with over thousands of clients successfully,” he says.
For the past 25 years, FranklinCovey has been training and consulting more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies and more than three fourth of the Fortune 500 companies.
A common problem faced by leaders is executing a strategy that required a significant change in human behaviour – the behaviour of many, or even all, of the people in the team or organisation, Kaicker says.
“All leaders struggle with this challenge even if they
don’t realise it,” he says, adding “I along with other co-authors felt the need to tackle the challenge of execution, and hence the book.”
According to Kaicker, three main problems in the functioning of an Indian company are cross functional collaboration, building engagement and maximising throughput.
“Indians are fantastic individual contributors, but when it comes to collaboration we rarely find success. Our inability to work effectively in teams leads to creation of silo culture.
“At times we are unable to sense the need to balance what employees contribute to an organisation and what they get back in return (the non monetary side). This balance is fundamental to sustaining the efforts that come with an engaged workforce,” he says.
On maximising throughput, he says, “We have a huge difficulty in saying ‘no’, which leads to a never-ending list of urgent work. Therefore we rarely get the time to focus on things that are important and result in long term benefits.”
According to Kaicker, Indian companies are very much ready to accept 4DX.
“As ‘The 4 Disciplines Of Execution’ is based on principles its validity is universal. The book has case studies of two major Indian players in their respective industries. And also our long 4DX clientele list proves the same.”
Asked if there has to be a fifth discipline what would that be, he says it would be in the next edition of the book. “Like with the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Dr. Stephen R. Covey only felt the need to come up with the 8th habit only came after learning from years of implementation of the seven habits solution.”
Kaicker also says that any organisation from any industry from any part of the world can benefit from the book.
“The four disciplines of execution are based upon the principles. And principles by definition cut across industries, organisations and levels,” he says. (PTI)
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