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The 12 Week Year — Chapter-06: Confronting the Truth
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Chapter 6 Confronting the Truth Have you ever wondered why sports are so motivating? In fact, not only are they motivating to the players, but also to spectators. Can you imagine people—fans—coming to watch you work, paying for the privilege to see you in action? One of the key reasons sports are so stimulating is that we keep score. Scorekeeping is at the heart of competition. We keep track of scores, measurements, and stats to determine success and identify areas for improvement. At any point during a sporting event, every player, coach, and fan knows exactly where their team stands. This information provides a base of knowledge to guide decisions that lead to better performance and success. In other words, scorekeeping lets us know if what we’re doing is effective. Too often in business we fail to keep score, and without some objective measure, we cannot know for certain if we are being effective. Just as in athletics, measurement drives the business process. In the 1960s Frederick Herzberg, an industrial psychologist, set out to determine what motivates people in the workplace. His extensive research identified the top two motivators as achievement and recognition. We contend that the only way to know if you are achieving is through measurement—that is, keeping score. A common misconception is that scoring damages self-esteem, but research indicates the opposite: Measurement builds self-esteem and confidence because it documents progress and achievement. Measuring Results Scorekeeping functions as a reality check, providing performance feedback and insight into your effectiveness. Effective measurement removes the
emotion from the evaluation process and paints an honest picture of your performance. The data is not concerned with effort or intentions; it simply focuses on outcomes. We all have a tendency from time to time to rationalize lackluster results, but with effective scorekeeping we are forced to confront the reality of our situation, even when it’s uncomfortable. While this can be difficult, the sooner we confront reality, the sooner we can shift our actions toward producing more desirable results. That’s what effective measurement does; it demands our attention and causes us to respond more immediately, increasing the likelihood of success down the road. “In God we trust; all others must bring data.” —W. Edwards Deming Measurement drives the execution process. It is the anchor of reality. Can you imagine the CEO of a large corporation not knowing the numbers? It’s no different for you and me. As the CEO of your own life and business, you need to know the numbers. Measurement provides important feedback that allows you to make intelligent decisions. Effective measurement captures both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decision making. Lag indicators—things like income, sales, commission dollars, pounds lost, body fat percentage, overall cholesterol levels—represent the end results that you are striving to achieve. Lead indicators are the activities that produce the end results—for instance the number of sales calls, or referrals are lead indicators in the sales process. While most companies and individuals effectively measure lag indicators, many tend to disregard lead indicators. An effective measurement system will have a combination of complementary lead and lag indicators. The most important lead indicator you have is a measure of your execution. Ultimately, you have greater control over your actions than over your results. Your results are created by your actions. An execution measure indicates whether you did the things you said were most important to achieving your goals. Keep in mind that you started with a vision, a compelling vision of the future that is bigger than the present. Then you established a set of 12 week
goals that are aligned with that vision. For each goal, you developed actions or tactics that describe the steps that you must take to achieve your goals. The element you have the most direct control over is the execution of your tactics. Knowing to what degree you followed through on those tactics is the execution measure. Because your 12 week goals were established in light of your longer-term vision, the execution measure also represents progress toward your vision. Having a way to measure your execution is critical because it allows you to pinpoint breakdowns and respond quickly. Unlike results, which can lag weeks, months, and in some cases years behind your actions, an execution measure provides more immediate feedback, which allows you to make game-time adjustments much faster. An execution measure is important for another reason as well. If you are not hitting your goal, you need to know whether it is due to a flaw in plan content or in execution, because there is a big difference in how to handle these two breakdowns. A breakdown in plan content occurs when strategies and tactics are not effective, while a breakdown in execution occurs when you fail to fully implement the plan tactics. More than 60 percent of the time the breakdown occurs in the execution process, but usually people assume the plan is at fault and change it. This is a mistake, because you don’t know if the plan doesn’t work if you’re not working the plan. Effective measurement will help you pinpoint the source of the breakdown so that you can address it head-on. In most cases, unless you are executing at a reasonably high level, there is no need to change or adjust your plan. The great thing is that every time you execute, you get feedback. If your actions don’t produce what you expected, you can make the necessary adjustments to your plan based on market feedback—but first you must execute the plan. Too often people want to change the plan before they’ve really executed it. As a general rule, you should rarely change the plan unless you’ve been effectively completing your plan tactics and it is still not producing. You could have created an awesome plan, but you’ll never know unless you actually implement it. However, if you are executing at a high level and the results you want are not coming, then it’s time to go back and adjust the plan. Physics tells us that for every action there is a reaction, so the good news is that every time
you execute, you produce something—it may not be what you expected, but something will happen. This something is market feedback, and it’s impossible to effectively adjust your plan without it. Without knowing what tactics you executed, any changes you make will be based purely on guesswork. “Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton Weekly Scorecard The best way to measure your execution is to work from a weekly plan (based upon your 12 Week Plan) and evaluate the percentage of tactics completed. For the 12 Week Year we’ve developed a tool called the Weekly Scorecard. If you’ve followed the process thus far, you understand that the weekly plan represents the critical activities that you need to accomplish each week to achieve your overall goals. The weekly scorecard then provides an objective measure of how well you executed your weekly plan. With the weekly scorecard you measure execution, not results. You score yourself on the percentage of activities you complete each week. We urge you to strive for excellence, not perfection. We have found that if you successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan, then you will most likely achieve your objectives. Remember that your plan contains the top priorities that will add the most value and have the greatest impact. In other words, you only need to be 85 percent effective on the top priorities to achieve excellence! A word of caution: Scorekeeping is not for the faint of heart. There will be times when you don’t execute well and score poorly. People often drop out when they reach this point because they lack the courage to face the reality of their actions. Instead of scoring their performance, they distract themselves with other things that seem important in the moment. With the 12 Week Year there is nowhere to hide. It shines a light on where you are performing and where you are not. All of us, from time to time, will struggle to execute. The 12 Week Year system forces you to confront your
lack of execution—and it’s uncomfortable, but it is the very thing that is required if you’re going to perform at your best. We call this discomfort productive tension. Productive tension is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re not doing the things you know you need to do. Our natural inclination when confronted with discomfort is to resolve it. In an effort to do this, people generally go one of two ways. The easy way out is to simply stop using the system and turn off the light that is shining on your performance breakdowns. Typically, this takes the form of passive resistance and you put off scoring your week and tell yourself that you’ll get to it later, but later never comes. The other way is to use productive tension as a catalyst for change. Instead of responding to the discomfort by bailing out, high achievers use the tension as an impetus to move forward. If you decide that quitting is not an option, then the discomfort of productive tension will eventually compel you to take action on your tactics. This encourages you to move forward by executing your plan. Even with a weekly score of 65 to 70 percent you will do well if you stay in the game. You won’t accomplish what you are capable of, but you will do well. It’s important to remember that the process is not about being perfect, but rather about getting better and better. Measurement drives the process. Effective scorekeeping is essential if you want to execute well and perform at your best. Take time to establish a set of key measures that include lead and lag indicators and, most importantly, be sure to score your execution. Have the courage to measure your performance!