Four Disciplines of Execution
Great ideas always start with the best intentions. Brainstorming happens and an idea is settled on. Everyone is excited to get started and you can't help but see how this new plan is going to help your organization. But then suddenly you realize, it's been a few weeks and no one is really talking about it anymore, the excitement has fizzled out and that great idea your team had come up with, is now a thing of the past. The day-to-day challenges have drowned out anything new that is trying to break the surface. As a teacher, I feel like I experience this every year at the beginning of the school year. All these new ideas are brought to the staff during professional development, but oftentimes, that is where they end because of all of the other things that have to be done before the kids show up on the first day. According to Covey, these day-to-day occurrences are known as the whirlwind (2012). New ideas must be intentionally talked about and implemented and that is where the four disciplines of execution can step in and help.
Using the four disciplines will be vitally important when working towards my innovation plan. I will be using these when working with my colleagues to integrate blended learning into my classroom and other classrooms on my campus. Teachers know what it is like to get caught in the whirlwind of everyday requirements and I believe that is why it can be so hard for some to try something new. "The goals are not shot down by the people, they are choked and starved by the whirlwind, the energy needed to operate the day-to-day; it's not that people are lazy or stupid, they are just busy" (McChesney, 2016). By using these disciplines we can try to prevent the whirlwind from taking the energy needed to get my innovation plan off the ground.
The first discipline is to focus on the wildly important. The biggest thing to take away from this discipline is to narrow your focus to one thing. When trying to create change, there are many goals you can begin to list, but when you have too many goals, it can cloud your mind and make it difficult to focus on the most important pieces. When trying to identify your wildly important goal, you want to look for things that won't be achieved without special attention. Teachers are so busy and it can be hard to get them on board to try something new. When the whirlwind begins to blow, it is easier to go back to what has always worked. This is what led me to set the goal of getting other teachers on board with me in this innovation plan.
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Identifying the measures you will use to track progress towards the WIG can be broken down into two categories, lead and lag measures. The lag measures tend to be the ones that we track the most, simply because they are easier to identify and track, but they lag behind the actions that will lead to your goal. McChesney uses the example of weight loss to explain this. When a person sets a goal weight they want to reach, when they step on that scale, they are measuring what has happened after the vital behaviors have taken place. It would be more effective if they tracked their calories taken in and their calories burned, then measure their weight. The tracking calories would be considered a lead measure. The lead measures lead to the lag measure. My lead measure involves having teachers share how they are integrating their blended learning into our weekly WIG meetings, this way they are able to track activities as they happen and not after the fact.
Scoreboards matter to people. Imagine watching your favorite team play on your television, but they never show the score, or even say that the score doesn't matter. You would quickly lose interest. Teaching middle school reinforces this for me because the moment you turn anything into a competition they are ALL IN. While we know scoreboards are important, the next important piece of this discipline is having the group create their own scoreboard. When the team chooses what they are being scored on, they know what is expected of them to help them reach their goals.
"Disciplines 1, 2, and 3 are how you set yourself up for a winning game, but discipline 4 is how your win the game."
-Chris McChesney, 2012
Accountability is the fuel that keeps the goal moving forward. By setting aside time each week to reflect on the goal and what is being done to meet it, it holds people accountable. Each week we meet three times for our PLC planning time. One of those days will have about 15 minutes set aside to talk about last week's commitments, whether or not we moved the scoreboard, and what we will commit to for the next week. By doing this we are able to keep track of our progress and share ideas moving forward.
Tying It All Together
To get an organization to add something new or to change, we have to change behavior. There are traces of the 6 Sources of Influence sprinkled throughout 4DX. The two of them begin with making sure you have a clear goal and this seems to be a common theme with the 5 Stages of Change as well. When you are clear on your goal or your end result, then it is easier to identify how to get there. I imagine it like taking a road trip. It can be difficult to plan your route if you don't know what the destination is going to be. But once you identify your destination then you are able to look at your route options. Another theme that the three of these pieces share is the presence of accountability. This keeps people focused and on the right track when life gets busy. By using the tools that I have gathered through the 6 Sources of Influence, the 4 Disciplines of Execution, and these 5 Stages of Change, behavior changes will be likely and will be the only way to keep blended learning successful and common in the classrooms on my campus.
References:
Covey, S., McChesney, C., & Huling, J. (2012). The 4 disciplines of execution: achieving your wildly important goals. Simon and Schuster.
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McChesney, C. [FranklinCovey]. (2016, December 29). The 4 disciplines execution in a nutshell [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJDliThj7g