The 4 Disciplines of Execution

Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals

By: Sean Covey

Narrated by: Sean Covey

Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

An insightful new work from the multimillion-copy best-selling author Sean Covey and the FranklinCovey organization, based on their work with hundreds of thousands of employees and large companies. It unveils the essential disciplines proven to help businesses and individuals realize their most important goals.

A publishing phenomenon, Sean Covey and the FranklinCovey organization have become one of the most respected brands in the highly competitive world of thought leadership in business. In his latest work, Covey lays out an unprecedented plan for goal-realization that will revolutionize the way we approach our dreams.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution provides a simple, proven formula for achieving the goals that every individual or organization needs to reach. From Marriott to the U.S. Navy, Covey and his team have worked with more than 200,000 people in hundreds of organizations to improve performance, identifying and honing four secrets of perfect execution:

• Focus on the Wildly Important
• Act on the Lead Measures
• Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
• Create a Cadence of Accountability

By allowing teams to separate those urgent tasks that demand attention merely to keep a company alive—called the “whirlwind”—from new, “wildly important” goals that promise to break new ground, these disciplines empower leaders to accomplish what is by far the most difficult aspect of creating results: executing a strategy that requires a change in behavior. Simply put, this is a work that no business, however small or large, can afford to pass up.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2012 FranklinCovey Co. (P)2012 Simon & Schuster

Several very mentally stimulating ideas.

What did you love best about The 4 Disciplines of Execution?

Many of the ideas are applicable across several disciplines and business types.

What did you like best about this story?

I actually found the idea of tracking lead and lag measureables a great method of predicting your overall performance. This would obviously help a leader to stay more engaged with the action.

Which scene was your favorite?

N/A

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I see a use for these methods in our church and helping to generate growth.

Love this book

I have learned a lot from this book and I believe I have found the missing link to push my business to the next level.

"Focus is good"...

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes...with some conditions.

Any additional comments?

As a student of strategic planning, leadership, and management, I think I've read just about all of the better volumes on the subject. 4DX is not really "ground breaking". Determine your most important strategic goal, determine how to measure progress, and be accountable to the measures necessary to accomplish it. Now, that being said, I can see how this process will have great value for many (most?) companies and organizations who have trouble focusing on improvement. So I would recommend the book. Just don't expect something world-changing when you do.

Loved it!

Enjoyed listening to it. Very convenient & informative. It's a must have. Get it now!

Great ideas, meh execution

The ideas in this book are dynamite. They make sense; when I'm listening, I want to get up and go and implement them. I've listened to it a few times, and I'll continue to relisten to it whenever I feel I need a reminder on how to set goals and achieve them. I've recommended it to colleagues at work. The reason I don't give it five stars is I don't care for all the readers on it, and because it's a little too much of an advertisement for the company that wrote it. Still, it's definitely worth listening to despite its performance shortcomings.

Love 4DX

This method helped me turn around two teams and soon my third. Read or listen several times to get the methodology down.

Specific instructions regarding weekly planning

It's an excellent brief book.

The main idea of the book:
Pick 1-2 wildly essential goals, and focus on them. Don't work on several things simultaneously.

Ideas
1) There're 20 % efforts, levers if you will in any process. We should define that sort of shots that produce 80% results
2) Visual displaying data about the score you gained is essential.
This scoreboard must be as simple as a soccer scoreboard.
3) Visibility drives accountability
4) Results drive engagement
5) A manager should create a weekly meeting when every responsible person reports about the current progress. Everyone should choose only 1-2 most important things they can do to move forward the score.
6) Weekly commitments (2-3) must represent a specific deliverable, and it must influence the lead measures.
7) Profoundly impacted engagement has the following qualities: - the more specific the commitment, the higher accountability (when what, and what is the outcome (deliverable)) - it's aligned to moving the scoreboard.

Great book if you have a hard time setting goals

If you could sum up The 4 Disciplines of Execution in three words, what would they be?

Truly very helpful.

What did you like best about this story?

I love how they go into detail to help you get started in getting your team on board with these ideas. Very helpful if your teams have been struggling to attain certain goals.

Pretty good content, skipped most of first reader

Would you listen to The 4 Disciplines of Execution again? Why?

This is probably the only business book I don't intend to listen to again. The first reader was intolerable after the first chapter or two. He speaks too quickly and lacks proper pause between ideas and thoughts, making it hard to absorb content. Slowing to half speed improved it a little, but I ended up skipping to the next reader.

Great book very practical

I really like how this book gives you practical application many books just theorize but this book shows you how to put it into practice. I put into practice the advantage by Patrick L. And I believe that both work well together.