To run a successful agency, you must set yourself up for success. It’s easy to get stuck straight into marketing, lead generation and working on client projects before laying the right foundation.
Created by FranklinCovey, the 4 Disciplines of Execution® provide a simple, repeatable formula for executing your most important priorities.
1. Focus on the Wildly Important
There will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute.
Too many businesses either have no goals or far too many. This process helps you discover that one important objective, your Wildly Important Goal® (WIG®). This is an objective that isn’t part of the everyday running of the business. It will be strategically important and won’t happen without dedicated focus and effort.
To uncover your WIG, start with where you are now (the starting line), where you want to be (the finish line), and by when (the deadline). You are looking for a single measure of success.
2. Act on the Lead Measures
Once a team is clear about its lead measures, their view of the goal changes.
Every business has lagging and leading measures. Lagging measures track the success of your wildly important goal and they are often the things that you worry about the most. Revenue, profit, client satisfaction, and total number of clients are all lagging indicators. These things have already happened.
Most people focus on the lagging measures. However, the leading measures are the key to unlocking your wildly important goal. All focus should go to these, with the aim of uncovering the earliest and most powerful indicators of your future success.
Lagging Measure | Leading Measure |
---|---|
Annual Turnover | Daily Sales Conversions |
Annual Profitability | Live Weekly Job Profitability |
Hiring Key Team Members | Weekly Interviews |
3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
People and teams play differently when they are keeping score.
This is an opportunity to get your whole team involved; after all, they will all impact the Wildly Important Goal. Each team member will have some leading indicators they can influence, so they must be part of the process.
When people are emotionally involved, they will be highly engaged. The scoreboard shows everyone where you are winning and losing. You can then tweak where it’s needed to ensure success.
Create a Cadence of Accountability
Accountability breeds response-ability.
This is the final step and is the one many businesses fail to execute properly. The key to doing this is to create a weekly meeting with the people that can impact the success of your business. This is not a business-as-usual meeting. It’s entirely focused on your scoreboards and leading measures.
In the meeting, each team member answers a simple question:
“What are the one or two most important things I can do this week that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard?”
Start the meeting with everyone reporting on how the previous week went and how that has impacted the leading or lagging measures. Finally, you all make commitments for the coming week.
This article is from Four Steps to Boost Your Agency Performance. Download the full guide for FREE!
