When it comes to successfully navigating the process of starting and growing a business, strategy is everything. Operating without one is basically like sailing a rudderless ship. Sure, you might end up at the right destination eventually.
But you’re far likelier to end up stuck in the shallows or grounded on a reef.
To that end, there are many different frameworks to which one might subscribe. In BlueCotton’s case, we turned to The 4 Disciplines of Execution, or 4DX. As we’ve mentioned in the past, this framework has played a considerable role in our success, applied alongside principles such as Greg Coker’s Soft Skills and Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius.
Today, we’re going to examine that framework in a bit more depth and discuss it in regards to how BlueCotton specifically has leveraged it.
What Are the Four Disciplines of Execution?
As described on Franklin Covey’s website, the four disciplines are as follows.
Focus on the Wildly Important
Why does your business exist? What, more than anything, do you want your organization to achieve? These are your main objectives, known in the framework as Wildly Important Goals.
The idea here is to keep your focus as narrow as possible — you shouldn’t have more than a few WIGs, and you’ll ideally want one core goal.
Act on the Lead Measures
4DX posits that for most businesses, 80% of your results stem from 20% of your activities. The second discipline is to identify what activities those are. Which processes, activities, and initiatives will give you the highest returns?
That’s where your focus needs to be.
Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
While overly-competitive workplaces inevitably devolve into toxicity, a bit of friendly competition can be just the thing to keep people productive, focused, and engaged. That’s why the third discipline of 4DX involves scoreboards. It doesn’t have to be anything super complicated, either — just a way for teams to measure their progress.
Create a Cadence of Accountability
Last but not least, allow your teams to hold one another accountable. 4DX advises that a business have each of their teams meet once a week to discuss successes, failures, and the team’s overall direction. This allows a company to engage in performance management without micromanaging.
How The Four Disciplines Apply to BlueCotton
Now that we’ve gone over the four disciplines let’s talk about how we’ve applied them at BlueCotton.
For our WIG, we want to ship our orders as quickly as possible while keeping them accurate. Our other goals include taking care of our employees, ensuring our customers are happy, and maintaining our integrity. We achieve all of these things through employee engagement, which we promote in a few ways.
- A scoreboard that allows employees to keep track of their mistakes and see improvements.
- Self-directed teams. People are free to work however they see fit and try new things if they feel it may help the company.
- Regular team meetings, per the fourth discipline.
- Leadership training via Greg Coke.
- Working Genius personality evaluations.
As for the second discipline, it’s precisely why we focus on relationship building. For us to stand out in the competitive apparel printing market, we need to give clients a reason to enjoy working with us. It takes only minimal effort for us to promote the right atmosphere in that regard, but that effort still makes all the difference in the world.