The 4 Disciplines of Execution

                 I have just finished reading a book about management. The title of this book is "The 4 Disciplines of Execution". In big corporate, normally manager has the execution power to monitor anything inside the corporate. To be a manager or damager, completely depend on how he exert his power of intelligence. To simplify the disciplines we are going to learn now, I try to use a few and simple words to explain its long story.

                First, only focus on important mission. The workload of a manager normally are enough to suffocate and bury themselves under heavy tasks. There are impossible to cope with any pieces of its without considering the limitation of resources you have. Those all limited you might be include limitation of only 24 hour a day, limited budget allocation on project, large scope of project may require high surveillance and guidance from manager. You could not tolerate with these because these all are the main necessary requirement to achieve and success. Only focus on important matter is the smart ways to handle it, you should know how to prioritize your all the items in the To-Do list. "One at a time", we are normal human who are designed to be able to work on one thing at a time and excel at it. We are not designed to multi-task. Our brains are designed to only truly focus on one thing at a time. If you try to pick up more "focus point" , you vision become blurry and nothing will get your full attentions. Narrowing your focus is going to yield better results. Manager must be aware of core priorities and identify the ones that need your attention the most. To be able to acknowledging issues and recognizing opportunities is good and beneficial, it doesn't mean you need to try and split your attention between all of these things at one time.

                Second, apply majority of your time, energy and resources to the activities that drive you to achieving defined goal. Identify the tasks and action that are most likely to help you to reach the goal. Don't waste your time on doing something useless. You must know that how to allocate your time, energy and resources to deal with each project accordingly. Lag measures is defined as an indicator of when you have achieved the goal. Lead measures will indicator of likelihood of you reaching the goal. Lead measures are predictive and entirely within your control, and at any point, if you are informed that you are unlikely to reach your goal, you can do something about it. Don't count the chicken haven't hatched. Leaders must spend the majority of their energy focusing on the lead measures and forgo the importance of lag measure. The leverage is the key principle behind the good lead measures. Without leverage, you won't be able to move forward despite your best efforts. Effort simply is not enough, but measures act as levear to give you ability to move forward and reach the goals.

                Thirdly, leader must keep a scoreboard. It is important to be able to visually see the score. Scoreboard need to be clear and outline the data in a simple and easy to understand way. It can be  motivate you team. You must know how far you are still distance away from the goal. How much effort you still need to speed up your progress to achieve corporate goals. The real time analyzing results from scoreboard sometimes could be help a manager to make a million dollar decision at a glance of time. Digitization and computerization the whole management process will be an ideal solution to keep you always up to date information. The scoreboard might be a sight you are reluctant to see from time to time in a day, but the concepts of feeling as if impossible to win and escape, is one of the most demoralizing for all. The importance of team morale being as high as possible, everyone should be playing to win, not simply playing to survive and get through the day. Result drive engagement with high spirits. When a team can identify their action as having significant impact on the result, then their engagement is going to soar. Scoreboards can be a powerful way to engage employees. A scoreboard not only drives results but uses the visible power of progress to instill the mindset of winning.

                Fourthly, create a accountability. The book emphasizes the importance of having a consistent way to track past performance and plan for future. It is designed to bring teams together and help team to operate at a top level with significant accountability. The lacks of accountability will find people losing focus, getting distracted and disagreements over what is really important. Regular meeting is the way to achieve this where team members can share their opinions and advices to the case. These meetings are designed to hold each team member accountable for their dedicated tasks, all with the aim of moving the lead measures. SWOT concept could be adopted to analyze the results from your projects. have a clear agenda, start with brief report on commitments, identifying successes and failures. Use time to troubleshoot the problems, and discuss how you all can overcome these. Finally, plan the new commitments and directions.

                Conclusion, I hope that these 4 simple disciplines can provide us a clear and simple guidance in our management. I know that it is easier to say than do especially, every problem and condition are unique to solution we seeking for. Most you are blurry in the uncertainty, most simple ways are the best to kill barrier.