18KB
The 12 Week Year — Chapter-15: Installing Process Control
- Source: /library/The 12 Week Year/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 96–105
- Pages without text: none
Chapter 15 Installing Process Control The 12 Week Year starts with a vision, and from that vision, you establish a set of 12 week goals. Based on those goals you develop a 12 week plan. Then comes process control. Mike Tyson said that everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Process control is a set of tools and events that help you work your plan, even when you get hit in the mouth. Making Sure Things Get Done It’s not enough to have a vision and a plan. If your goals and plan are designed to help you achieve a higher level of performance, then you most likely have specific tactics that are new actions for you. New actions are almost always uncomfortable. That’s one of the things that makes change so difficult. It’s one thing to identify the actions needed to create a better result; it’s a whole other thing to consistently do them. Without structural and environmental support, follow through becomes a constant exercise of willpower. Relying on willpower occasionally can work, but as studies have shown, willpower has a fatigue factor, and as we’ve all experienced, sometimes we have the willpower and sometimes we don’t. If you are going to achieve what you are capable of, you can’t leave it up to willpower alone. Process control uses tools and events to create support structures that can augment, and in some cases take the place of, willpower. I can promise you that Michael Phelps, who holds more gold medals than any other Olympian, had days when he didn’t feel like getting in the pool or working out in the gym—but he did. That’s because he has structures in place that make it easier for him to get in the pool than not to. If you’re going to be great, you need support structures just like he has. So whether
you’ve got a surplus of discipline on a particular day or not, you work your plan. There are two items I want to share with you that will form the foundation of your support. The first is the weekly plan. Weekly Plans The weekly plan is a powerful tool that translates the 12 week plan into daily and weekly action. The weekly plan is the instrument that organizes and focuses your week. It becomes your game plan for each week. The weekly plan is not a glorified to-do list; rather, it reflects the critical strategic activity that needs to take place that week in order to achieve your goals. Keep in mind that the weekly plan is a derivative of your 12 week plan. It is not something that you create each week based on what happens to be urgent at the time. On the contrary, the weekly plan is populated with the tactics from the 12 week plan that are due that particular week. This process ensures that the weekly plan contains only those actions that are strategic and critical in nature. Because the weekly plan is driven by the 12 week plan, which is connected to your long-term vision, you can be confident that the actions it contains are, by default, the most important actions of the week. If these tactics get done, you’ve had a great week; if not, you’ve lost a week. Having this level of clarity each week is not only powerful, it’s life changing. Figure 15.1 is a sample weekly plan from our online system, Achieve! In this example, you can see that each individual goal is stated and has the affiliated tactics that are due this week. We strongly recommend that you print a copy and calendarize these critical activities. The printed weekly plan then becomes the document that you use to manage each day and ensure that these items get completed this week. Figure 15.1 Your weekly plan is the cornerstone of effective execution. It captures the actions due each week that are needed to reach your 12 week goal.
Don’t Go It Alone The second element of process control is peer support. There was a fascinating article in Fast Company in May 2005, entitled “Change or Die,” that presented studies conducted with patients who had severe medical conditions that required lifestyle changes in order to live. The sad fact was that after only 12 months, 90 percent of the patients had reverted back to their old lifestyles, virtually guaranteeing an impending death. Faced with the imminent threat of death, an overwhelming majority of people still failed to consistently make more productive choices. There was a group that had a much higher success rate—almost seven times greater. These patients were involved in peer support sessions, and they had a success rate of nearly 80 percent. The groups not involved in peer support had a 10 percent success rate. These statistics remind me of
what George Shinn, the owner of the Charlotte Hornets basketball team, once said: “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” The groups involved in peer support met on a regular basis and discussed their progress, struggles, and challenges. By encouraging one another, they generally stayed on track. The lesson is that if you are implementing change, don’t go it alone. Your chances of success are seven times greater if you employ peer support. In working with thousands of clients over the past decade, we have experienced the same dynamic. When clients meet regularly with a group of peers, they perform better; when they don’t, performance suffers. We recommend forming a group of two to four committed individuals to meet weekly. We call these meetings WAMs, which stands for Weekly Accountability Meeting. Assuming you’ve read the chapter on accountability, then you know this meeting is not about trying to hold each other accountable, but rather fostering individual accountability to consistently execute your plan. The WAM is a critical element of process control. It’s a short meeting that is typically held on Monday morning after everyone has had a chance to plan their week and it lasts approximately 15 to 30 minutes. This is not a punitive session where we try to hold others accountable and dole out negative consequences or tongue lashing for those who are faltering. The WAM is used to confront breakdowns, recognize progress, create focus, and encourage action. Most WAMs loosely follow a standard agenda, as follows. Feel free to amend the agenda as you see fit as long as you keep the focus on the execution. Weekly Accountability Meeting Agenda I. Individual Report Out: Each member states how they are tracking against their goals and how well they executed. Here are four areas to focus on: a. Your results for the 12 Week Year to date. b. Your weekly execution score. c. Intentions for the coming week. d. Feedback and suggestions from the group.
II. Successful Techniques: As a group, discuss what’s been working well and how to incorporate these techniques into one another’s plan. III. Encouragement. The format is pretty straightforward. Each individual gets a few minutes to report out to the group. You will want to comment on your results to date. Are you on track, ahead of where you should be at this point, or behind? Next, you’ll tell the group your weekly execution score. (You’ll learn how to calculate this in Chapter 16.) You will also announce your intentions for this week as they relate to your execution. Finally, the group will challenge you, congratulate you, and provide feedback and suggestions. After each member has reported out, you can have a short conversation on what members are doing that is working well and is transferable to others’ plans and goals. The WAM ends with encouraging the group to have a productive week. Lezlee Liljenberg leveraged her team’s WAMs as the starting point for redesigning how the team spent their days. Here’s how Lezlee describes it. Overall, executing our 12 week plans made us more aware that every day counts! When we started, we assigned each staff member an area of interest, and they created an action plan to grow that area. Each 12 Week Year we evaluated those assignments and realigned what needed to happen accordingly. Weekly accountability meetings were probably the biggest success of all of the areas for us. When staff began to evaluate all that they achieved on a weekly basis they became more aware of where they spent their time. We decided to spend a day with each staff person with our only focus being how they spent their day. Doing this we were able to determine where and how they were wasting time. This also helped us to make tough decisions to address some tasks that were more time consuming than productive. The ROI on some of the tasks showed that they were not worth it and needed to be eliminated. If we didn’t check in together as a team each week to review our progress we probably never would have done this.
Getting rid of annualized thinking helped us to know we had to hit the numbers quicker and the WAMs helped us to do that. The leader is responsible for making sure the 12 Week Year stays on track and that the group does not venture away from the vision and the 12 week plan. My advice: attend a WAM and stick to your plan, and the 12 Week Year will work! The Weekly Routine The only way you will reach your 12 week goals is by taking action on your plan each day. The weekly plan and the WAM are two steps in a three step process called the weekly routine. These easy-to-follow steps will ensure that you execute each week and accomplish your goals. The weekly routine consists of three simple, yet powerful steps:
- Score your week
- Plan your week
- Participate in a WAM Step 1: Score Your Week In Chapter 16 you will see how the 12 Week Year enables you to effectively measure your execution through a weekly scorecard. This measure, more than any other, is the most powerful indicator of success that you have. As part of your weekly routine, you will want to take a few minutes each week and score your execution. You will learn more details about how to calculate these numbers in Chapter 16, but for now, just know that it is an essential part of your weekly routine. Step 2: Plan Your Week So far, we have talked in detail about the importance of having and working from a weekly plan. If you are using Achieve!, the system will automatically populate your weekly plan with the tactics that are due this week. If you are using a paper system like Freehand, then you will need to refer to your 12 week plan, pull out those tactics that are due this week, and
transfer them to your weekly plan. In either case, don’t start a week without a weekly plan. Each week you will need to schedule about 15 minutes to score and plan your week. Approximately 70 percent of our clients perform this task first thing Monday morning. The other 30 percent do it sometime between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. It really doesn’t matter when you do it as long as you schedule a time that you can be consistent with each week. Step 3: Participate in a WAM As I discussed previously, your probability of success greatly increases when you meet regularly with a small group of peers. Make a short list of those who you would like to WAM with each week, then contact those people and determine a regular day and time to meet. Also decide if you’ll meet in person or over the phone. Have each member enter the WAM in the calendar as a recurring event. These three simple steps form the basis of your high performance system. The steps are easy to do—and even easier not to do. If you really are serious about your goals, then commit to this weekly routine. Thinking Shift Often people assume that because they know what they need to do, they won’t benefit from a weekly plan. Based on numerous studies and our experience with thousands of clients, that is just not the case. A plan between your ears is not nearly as effective as a plan on paper. In our experience, you are 60 to 80 percent more likely to execute a written weekly plan than a plan that is in your head. Putting your plan to paper eliminates ambiguity and creates transparency. For some, this transparency is excruciatingly uncomfortable and produces all kinds of unproductive thinking that can keep you from creating a clear, written plan. The thinking often goes like this: “I know what I need to do, so I don’t need to write it down.” Or “I need more flexibility than that. Writing it down just restricts me.” Or, here’s another one: “I’m extremely
busy; I don’t have time for that.” All of these are excuses designed to avoid personal accountability. Some people have the same kind of limited thinking when it comes to the WAM meetings. They say, “I don’t have time for that,” or “Only weak people need that.” All of these thoughts and comments are smoke screens that reveal a deeper fear of transparency and accountability. Make no mistake, you will be more successful if you work from a written weekly plan and meet regularly with a group of your peers! Don’t kid yourself; you’re not different. To get the most out of your time and life, align your thinking with the benefits of the steps in the weekly routine. Team Application The 12 Week Year is a cultural change, a new way of operating. Lee Iacocca, former automotive CEO, said that the speed of the leader is the speed of the team. As the leader of your group, you ultimately shape the culture of your organization through your conversations, your actions, and your focus. The 12 Week Year is a cultural shift. For the organization to be successful in adopting it as an operating system and achieving the results you desire, you will need to champion the cause. Because culture is a reflection of the leader, your actions more than anything else will have the greatest impact on determining whether your team fully adopts and profits from the 12 Week Year. Your first task is to model the behavior that you want to see in them. That starts with you adopting the weekly routine, scoring and planning each week, and participating in a WAM. The next step is for you to individually inspect all of your direct reports’ habits. Do they have a plan each week? Are they scoring each week? Are they actively participating in a WAM? There will be times when your people struggle. These are typically the times when they stop planning and scoring and drop out of the WAM groups. This is the exact opposite of what they need; it is critical that they stay engaged. At these times they will need your leadership and encouragement to stay in the game. You will want to
formally review their weekly plans and scorecards with them at least once a month in a scheduled one-on-one coaching session. Occasionally, you may want to sit in on one of their WAM meetings and provide some coaching and encouragement. Keep it positive. Recognize and celebrate early successes and maintain the focus on execution. Common Pitfalls Don’t let these common pitfalls rob you of your success. Pitfall 1: You don’t plan each week. Getting off to a fast start each week creates momentum and helps you to be more productive throughout the week. Monday is often a stress-filled day and we can feel behind from the moment it begins. Often at the beginning of the week we just jump right in with email, voicemail, and whatever else may be awaiting us. In addition to just diving into our week, other things can get in the way of us taking time to plan the week—including a negative mind- set. Maybe one of the following thoughts has slowed you down: You have no time for it. You think that you’re just too busy and that you’ll get to it later, but later never comes. You don’t need it. The misguided thinking that somehow you’re the exception and don’t need a game plan for the week. Watch how quickly the time slips away! You’re above it. Thinking that a weekly plan is for beginners and someone in your position doesn’t need it. You already know it. The thinking that you already know what you need to do, so there’s no benefit to writing it down or planning things out. You don’t want to be accountable. For some, working from a written weekly plan creates a level of discomfort because it continually reminds them when they are not doing what they know they should be doing. Pitfall 2: You include all your tasks.
The weekly plan does not contain everything you do in your job, just the strategic items from your 12 week plan. You should have a separate sheet with to-do items and callbacks. Do not dilute your plan by adding all the lower-level activities that you do in the course of your day. Keep the weekly plan for only strategic items and commitments. Pitfall 3: You assume that each week is the same. Another mistake that many make is assuming that each week has the same activity so they create one weekly plan and then copy it each week. It’s highly possible that many of your weeks look similar, but it’s unlikely that all 12 weeks have the exact same activities due. Even if you are the statistical exception, the benefit of spending five to ten minutes to set up your coming week pays big dividends. Pitfall 4: You add tactics weekly. Keep in mind that a weekly plan is essentially a one-twelfth slice of your 12 week plan. Occasionally, you may add a tactic to your weekly plan, but this should not happen frequently. Most new tactics should be added to the 12 week plan first, and then flow through to the weekly plan. This prevents you from getting drawn into urgent activities that are not necessarily strategic. Pitfall 5: You don’t use it to guide your day. Once you’ve created your weekly plan, you will want to use it daily to keep you on track with the activities that are most important to achieving your goals. Check in with your weekly plan first thing each morning, once or twice throughout the day, and before you go home. When you learn to guide your daily activity based on your weekly plan, you will begin to experience truly breakthrough performance. Pitfall 6: You don’t make it part of your routine. Each of us has a routine. Routines are an important part of consistent success. Make the decision right now to incorporate the weekly routine.