The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) program, created by FranklinCovey, drives organizational results through behavior change. 4DX focuses on articulating your major, definite objective, the one it calls the Wildly Important Goal (WIG or The War) and then breaking it down into a handful of “WIG Battles” and quarterly execution steps.

The process includes keeping a weekly scoreboard of lead measures for each team participant and monitoring performance using a cadence of weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings. Simply put, if your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is the “What” of your organization, the process of execution is the “How”.

The authors argue that most leaders find strategy much easier than execution; strategy is what major MBA programs focus on as well. This is not surprising because strategy “only” takes analysis, frameworks, and smart people putting their heads together, whereas execution requires lasting behavioral change.

The book quotes W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, as saying, “When the majority of the people behave in a certain way, the problem is systemic.” Execution is the key to your people understanding the organization’s strategy in the first place.

The authors commissioned Harris Interactive to survey employees at hundreds of businesses and governmental agencies and found that the major reason for failure of execution was lack of…