4DX - Metrics to achieve your Startup Goals

At Cow-shed Startup we use The 4 Disciplines of Execution to make sure we achieve our most important goals.  4DX is a simple approach used by organisations like JPMorgan, Marriot Hotels and many others.

Its so easy to get caught up in the urgent day to day tasks and miss out on achieving the important goals your startup needs to succeed. Have you ever found the more you try to do, the less you actually achieve?

There are 4 stages of 4DX

1) Focussing on the Wildly Important

You start by identifying your Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) - ideally just one, possibly two - that you need to focus on above all other goals.  

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2) Acting on Lead Measures

Lag measures such as revenue, profit, market share and customer satisfaction cant be fixed once you know what they are.  These are the most important measures you need to achieve, but to be sure of achieving them you need to focus on lead measures.

Lead measures can be influenced by your team.   Handing out free samples in a bakery is a lead measure which should help you achieve your lag measure of higher sales.  

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3) Keeping a compelling scoreboard

If your team is fully engaged and know whether they are winning or losing, you are more likely to acheive your WIG.  When you watch a sports team warm up vs play in a scored match, the difference is clear.We encourage engagement by crafting a dashboard which focuses on the WIG and the key lead and lag measures you need to acheive it.

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4) Creating accountability

We encourage a short 10 minute weekly meeting to make sure team members are accountable for producing results, despite their day to day demands.  Each week, team members focus on these questions:  

• What are the 1 or 2 most important things I can do in the next week, outside my day to day tasks, that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard
• Did I meet last week’s committments
• How well am I moving the lead and lag indicators
• What are next weeks committments

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We find missing even one meeting makes the chance of hitting the WIG drop significantly.