14KB
The 12 Week Year — Chapter-12: The Execution System
- Source: /library/The 12 Week Year/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 62–70
- Pages without text: none
Chapter 12 The Execution System The 12 Week Year is an execution system that helps you operate at your best each day by creating clarity and focus on what matters most and a sense of urgency to do it now. As a result, more of the important stuff gets done day in and day out. A few days or weeks of that is no big deal, but when you put together day after day after day—week after week after week —the result is like compound interest, and in just 12 weeks you can be in a very different position, both personally and professionally. You may have noticed as you read through the first section of this book that, in addition to restructuring your year into 12 weeks, there are a number of fundamental elements that we discussed as well. In fact, there are eight elements that we believe are fundamental to high performance in any endeavor. Those eight elements are: Vision Planning Process Control Measurement Time Use Accountability Commitment Greatness in the Moment In this section, we’ve organized these elements into a set of three principles and five disciplines. We have found that organizing them in this way will help you better understand how they operate as a holistic system, making it easier for you to apply them consistently. One of the challenges with these disciplines and principles is that most people know what they are—but knowing and doing are two very different things. As you learn to leverage these more effectively in your business and
personal life, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish and how quickly you can do it. Three Principles The 12 Week Year builds on a foundation of three principles that in the end determine an individual’s effectiveness and success. These principles are:
- Accountability
- Commitment
- Greatness in the Moment Let’s take a closer look at each one. Accountability: Accountability is ultimately ownership. It is a character trait, a life stance, a willingness to own actions and results, regardless of the circumstances. The very nature of accountability rests on the understanding that each and every one of us has freedom of choice. It is this freedom of choice that is the foundation of accountability. The ultimate aim of accountability is to continually ask one’s self, “What more can I do to get the result?” Commitment: Commitment is a personal promise that you make to yourself. Keeping your promises to others builds strong relationships, and keeping promises to yourself builds character, esteem, and success. Commitment and accountability go hand-in-glove. In a sense, commitment is accountability projected into the future. It is ownership of a future action or result. Building your commitment capacity has a dramatic effect on your personal and business results. The 12 Week Year helps you to build the capacity to follow through on critical commitments and achieve breakthrough results in all areas. Greatness in the Moment: As I wrote in Chapter 10, greatness is not achieved when a great result is reached, but long before that, when an individual makes the choice to do what is necessary to become great. The results are not the attainment of greatness, but simply confirmation of it. You become great long before the results show it. It happens in an
instant, the moment you choose to do the things you need to do to be great, and each moment that you continue to choose to do those things. These three principles—accountability, commitment, and greatness in the moment—form the foundation of personal and professional success. Five Disciplines The 12 Week Year tackles both the way you think and the actions you take. At the action level, it concentrates on building capacity within a set of success disciplines that are required for effective execution. We have found that top performers—whether athletes or business professionals—are great, not because their ideas are better, but because their execution disciplines are better. These five disciplines are:
- Vision
- Planning
- Process Control
- Measurement
- Time Use The 12 Week Year will help you apply these disciplines in a way that leverages your knowledge and skills, and fosters consistent action. Vision: A compelling vision creates a clear picture of the future. It is critical that your business vision aligns with and enables your personal vision. This alignment ensures a powerful emotional connection that promotes a sustained commitment, and continual action. Planning: An effective plan clarifies and focuses on the top-priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve the vision. A good plan is constructed in a manner that facilitates effective implementation. Process Control: Process control consists of a set of tools and events that align your daily actions with the critical actions in your plan. These tools and events ensure that more of your time is spent on strategic and money making activities. Measurement: Measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality. Effective measurement combines both lead and lag indicators
that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decision making. Time Use: Everything happens in the context of time. If you are not in control of your time, then you are not in control of your results. Using your time with clear intention is a must. It’s important that you see the interconnectedness of these five disciplines. If you don’t have a clear, compelling vision, then the other disciplines really don’t matter because you are not living a life by design but by chance. If you have a vision but no plan, then you have a pipe dream. If you have a vision and a focused plan but lack process control, then you’ll have a lot of frustration, because some days you will execute and make progress and some days you won’t. If you have those disciplines in place but lack the courage to keep score, then there is no way for you to know what’s working and what isn’t. There is no way for you to make game-time adjustments that can accelerate your success. Finally, if all of those are in place but you are not intentional about what you say yes to and what you say no to, then the day is controlling you. The Emotional Cycle of Change To apply the 12 Week Year will require change, and change is uncomfortable. It’s helpful to understand the process we go through emotionally when faced with change, so we won’t be derailed by it. Whenever we decide to make a change in our lives, we experience an emotional roller coaster. Psychologists Don Kelley and Daryl Connor describe this phenomenon in a paper called “The Emotional Cycle of Change.” Kelley and Connor’s emotional cycle of change (ECOC) includes five stages of emotional experience, which we will explore here (with slight modification based on our experience). Regardless of the change you choose to make, you will experience this cycle. You can plot new relationships, new purchases, new jobs, and new neighborhoods on the ECOC, and it’s always the same. Sometimes the highs are higher, and sometimes the lows are lower; sometimes the cycle is shorter, and other times it’s longer, but in all cases, you will experience this cycle when you decide to make a change in your life (Figure 12.1).
Figure 12.1 The emotional cycle of change that we use is adapted from Kelley/Connor’s model of change cycles based upon interaction with our clients implementing the 12 Week Year. There are five stages that people move through emotionally when changing their behavior: I. Uninformed Optimism II. Informed Pessimism III. Valley of Despair IV. Informed Optimism V. Success and Fulfillment The first stage of change is most often exciting, as we imagine all of the benefits and have not yet experienced any of the costs. Our emotions are driven by our uninformed optimism, which is in the positive emotional area of the graph. You see all of the benefits of the change and none of the
downside, so this stage is fun. You are brainstorming ideas and strategizing how you might create the new level of results that you desire. Unfortunately, uninformed optimism doesn’t last long. As you learn more about the reality of what it takes to change, positive emotions can quickly sour. The second stage of change, informed pessimism, is characterized by a shift to a negative emotional state. At this point, the benefits don’t seem as real, important, or immediate, and the costs of the change are apparent. You start to question if the change is really worth the effort and begin to look for reasons to abandon the effort. If that’s not bad enough, things get worse. I call the third stage the valley of despair. This is when most people give up. All of the pain of change is felt and the benefits seem far away or less important—and there is a fast, easy way to end the discomfort: Going back to the way you used to do things. After all, you rationalize that it wasn’t so bad before. If you quit on change when you are in the valley of despair, you go back to the first stage, uninformed optimism, which is a whole lot more fun than being in the valley! It is precisely at this stage—the valley of despair—that having a compelling vision is critical. Nearly all of us have had times in our lives when we wanted something so badly we were willing to pay any price and overcome any hurdle to get it. Maybe it was your first car, maybe it was getting into that college you always dreamed of attending, maybe it was pursuing the person whom you wanted to marry, maybe it was your dream job—whatever it was, you wanted it so badly that you willingly paid the price of your own comfort to get it. Wanting passionately to reach your vision, combined with commitment and the tools and events of process control, is the way through the valley to the next stage of change. The fourth stage is informed optimism. At this stage, your likelihood of success is much higher. You are back in the positive emotional area of the cycle. The benefits of your actions are starting to bear fruit and the costs of change are lessened because your new thoughts and actions are becoming more routine. The key at this stage is to not stop! Success and fulfillment is the final stage of the ECOC. At this final stage of change, the benefits of your new behaviors are fully experienced and the costs of change are virtually gone. The actions, which at the beginning were
difficult and uncomfortable, have now become routine. Every time you complete the cycle, you build not only your capacity, but also your confidence. At this point you can move on to the next change that you want to implement with greater assurance of success. The ECOC is the description of the emotional impact of change. By being aware of this cycle, you are less likely to be derailed by negative emotions and are able to manage change more effectively. Closed System The 12 Week Year is a closed system in that it contains everything you need to succeed. In our two-day workshop we have the participants list everything it takes to excel. Then, we list all those items on a flip chart. Typically, there are more than 20 and the list fills one to two large sheets of paper. When we go through each item, every one of them is represented in these disciplines and principles; that is why if you apply the 12 Week Year fully, as a complete system, you can’t help but improve. The challenge is that not everyone applies it as a system. Often people will apply some of the elements and not apply others. Like any system, the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of the parts. Apply and leverage any one of the disciplines or principles and you will gain from it, but the real breakthrough comes when all of them are applied in their entirety. When applied in this way, the 12 Week Year becomes a self-correcting system that creates a breadcrumb trail that allows you to pinpoint any breakdowns and take corrective action on a timely basis. It is a deliberate practice system that is designed for continuous improvement. In addition to being a closed system, the 12 Week Year also facilitates change. When you install the 12 Week Year as your operating system, it makes subsequent change easier. Let’s use a computer as an analogy: You can have the best software money can buy, but if your operating system is not working, those programs are worthless. We’ve all experienced this from time to time when the printer won’t print, the document won’t open, or your computer is frozen.
When you install the 12 Week Year as your operating system, it leverages your other business systems. For instance, most companies have systems for marketing, sales, products, service, technology, and other business processes. Without a system for execution, we tend to hang onto our existing systems because that is what is familiar and predictable— especially when we are faced with change. When the 12 Week Year is your operating system, it supports all your other business systems, so when change comes—and it will—you do not experience a massive upheaval (Figure 12.2). Instead, you can easily incorporate new systems like plug- and-play software. Figure 12.2 The 12 Week Year is not bolted on top of everything else you have to do. In order for it to work in the long term, it must become the system you use to get everything else done. It must become your execution system. People need stability; we need some things to remain the same. The 12 Week Year as an operating system stays the same. It provides a consistent platform to implement corporate initiatives and change efforts without the chaos that usually accompanies change. For an individual, it functions as the daily foundation that doesn’t change. The 12 Week Year is not one more thing you do, it is how you get things done!
In the following chapters we will take a deep dive into the disciplines and principles of the 12 Week Year. We will provide you with even greater insight, as well as tools and exercises you can use to effectively apply and leverage these fundamentals to achieve more in 12 weeks than most do in 12 months.