What are the 4 Disciplines of Execution?
A management framework from FranklinCovey borrows from goal-setting research and has been tested directly very little. Which part rests on what.
Answer to the question
What are the 4 Disciplines of Execution?
The 4 disciplines of execution are a management framework from Chris McChesney and his co-authors at FranklinCovey, published by Free Press in 2012. They are to focus on the wildly important goals, act on the lead measures, keep a compelling scoreboard and create a cadence of accountability.
Key takeaways
- McChesney and two co-authors at FranklinCovey set out the four disciplines in a 2012 book. The evidence offered at launch was the company's count of more than 13,000 teams, with no outcome data.
- Locke and Latham's 2002 review of thirty-five years of work found specific, difficult goals generally outperform an instruction to do your best, with feedback, commitment and task complexity as conditions.
- Harkin and colleagues' 2016 meta-analysis of 138 studies found that interventions to monitor goal progress modestly improved goal attainment, more when progress was recorded or made public. It tested monitoring, not the framework.
- A 2022 conference paper on 43 managers at one bank reports each discipline positively associated with target achievement. Newport reports nine papers accepted against a target of five in his own year.
The four disciplines of execution are to focus on the wildly important goals, act on the lead measures, keep a compelling scoreboard and create a cadence of accountability.
Chris McChesney and two co-authors at FranklinCovey set them out in The 4 Disciplines of Execution, a book from Free Press. The framework is a management method, and the evidence offered for it has come largely from the company that sells it.
Four habits, one book, one vendor
The release that launched the book in 2012 said its authors had worked with more than 13,000 teams and 200,000 people. That figure is FranklinCovey's own description of its client work, and the release gives no outcome data beside it. It is the nearest thing to an evidence base that the disciplines of execution arrived with.
The first discipline asks a team to pick a very small number of ambitious outcomes and let everything else come second. The second separates lag measures, the results that arrive too late to change, from lead measures, the behaviours a person can act on today. The third puts those measures on a scoreboard everyone can see. The fourth is a short, regular meeting at which each person reports against the last period's number and commits to the next one.
What goal research supports
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham summarised thirty-five years of their goal-setting work in a 2002 review in American Psychologist. Specific, difficult goals generally produced higher performance than an instruction to do your best, and performance tended to rise with difficulty until people reached the limits of their ability or lost commitment to a very hard goal. The review names four routes: goals direct attention, raise effort, extend persistence and prompt people to find useful strategies.
The same review sets conditions. People need feedback on their progress, and goals combined with feedback worked better than goals alone. Commitment matters most for difficult goals. On complex tasks, where success depends on finding a good strategy, the effect of goals was smaller. The first two disciplines ask for a concrete target and a number to count, which fits the first finding. The review appeared a decade before the book, so it speaks to goals in general and not to this framework.
In a 2016 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, Harkin and colleagues reviewed randomised experiments on monitoring progress towards a goal, covering 138 studies and nearly 20,000 participants. The interventions raised how often people checked their progress and produced a smaller but reliable gain in reaching goals. Part of the gain ran through the extra monitoring. The gain was larger when progress was physically recorded and when outcomes were reported or made public.
A posted scoreboard records progress where others can see it, and the regular meeting reports it to colleagues, so the third and fourth disciplines resemble the conditions under which monitoring worked best. That is our reading, because those experiments tested monitoring interventions and not this framework. Lead measures fit the same pattern, since they give a person something countable to monitor each day. The Why We Project has covered the other side of public commitment in Why Announcing Your Goal Can Backfire, and the pull of a visible tally in The Endowed Progress Effect at Work.
| Discipline | What it asks of a team | Nearest independent research |
|---|---|---|
| Focus on the wildly important goals | A very small number of ambitious outcomes | Goal-setting research on specific, difficult goals |
| Act on the lead measures | Count behaviours a person controls today | Monitoring experiments, by our reading |
| Keep a compelling scoreboard | A visible tally of those measures | Monitoring experiments on recording progress |
| Create a cadence of accountability | A short, regular report meeting | Monitoring experiments on reporting outcomes |
Direct tests are scarce
Direct tests of the disciplines of execution are scarce. A 2022 conference paper studied 43 relationship managers in the credit division of an Indonesian bank, all trained in the method and using it for at least two semesters. Its authors report that each discipline had a positive effect on meeting commercial credit targets. The data came from questionnaires, interviews and company records at one bank, so the study shows an association within one workplace and cannot separate the framework from everything else that changed there.
A 2009 paper in Academy of Management Perspectives, titled Goals Gone Wild, argued that the benefits of goal setting had been overstated and its side effects largely ignored. Its list includes a narrow focus that neglects areas without a goal, distorted risk preferences, more unethical behaviour, inhibited learning, damage to organisational culture and reduced intrinsic motivation. The authors recommended treating goal setting like a powerful medicine, with careful dosing and supervision. The first discipline deliberately narrows a team's attention, which makes that list relevant to it, though the paper concerns goal setting in general.
Cal Newport adapted the disciplines of execution for individual work in Deep Work and used his own academic year as the trial. His wildly important goal was a number of research papers, his lead measure was hours of deep work, tallied on a card kept in view, and his cadence was a weekly review of those hours. Why Attention Residue Lingers at Work covers the attention research that Deep Work builds on. Newport presents the arrangement as an adaptation of a business book and reports nine papers accepted against a target of five, which is one person's account of one year.
Common questions
What are the 4 disciplines of execution?
The 4 disciplines of execution are a management framework from Chris McChesney and his co-authors at FranklinCovey, published by Free Press in 2012. They are to focus on the wildly important goals, act on the lead measures, keep a compelling scoreboard and create a cadence of accountability.
Who created the 4 disciplines of execution?
Chris McChesney and two co-authors, all at FranklinCovey when Free Press published the book in 2012. FranklinCovey sells the framework as a consulting and training product, and the evidence it has published for it consists of its own client work.
Is there research behind the 4 disciplines of execution?
Parts of it overlap with research. Goal-setting studies support specific, difficult goals with feedback, and a 2016 meta-analysis supports monitoring progress. Direct evidence for the framework as a package is a small 2022 conference study of 43 managers at one bank, which reports an association and cannot show cause.
Sources
Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work. New York: Grand Central Publishing. Seed book; vault hub Books/Deep Work.
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2012). The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. New York: Free Press.
FranklinCovey, Inc. (2012). New book released: The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Press release, 3 May 2012. https://ir.franklincovey.com/news-releases/news-release-details/new-book-released-4-disciplines-execution-achieving-your-wildly/
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). “Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey.” American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., & Sheeran, P. (2016). “Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence.” Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198-229. doi:10.1037/bul0000025 https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000025
Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). “Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting.” Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16. doi:10.5465/AMP.2009.37007999 https://doi.org/10.5465/AMP.2009.37007999
Siahaan, B. M. P., Absah, Y., & Sadalia, I. (2022). “The influence of implementation of the four disciplines of execution on the achievement of commercial credit targets at PT Bank Sumut.” Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Management (INSYMA 2022), 600-606. doi:10.2991/978-94-6463-008-4_76 https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-008-4_76