Wildly Important Goals | Chris McChesney | 2016 GLS Faculty Spotlight

Have you ever wondered why your organization gets caught up in day-to-day issues but cannot seem to make progress on your big goals?

Chris McChesney has spent the past seven years studying best practices in how organizations can execute on their strategies. He gathered the data into a comprehensive system, The Four Disciplines of Execution, and will be sharing his insights at the Summit. We couldn’t be more excited to share this content that every leader will be able to “apply on Monday.” The post below introduces his concepts.

The More You Try to Do, The Less You Accomplish

This is a stark, inescapable principle we all live with. But somewhere along the way, most leaders forget this. Why? Because smart, ambitious leaders don’t want to do less, they want to do more, even when they know better.

Isn’t it really difficult for you to say no to a good idea, much less a great one? And yet, there will always be more good ideas than you and your teams have the capacity to execute. That’s why your first challenge is focusing on the wildly important.

Focus is a natural principle. The sun’s scattered rays are too weak to start a fire, but once you focus them with a magnifying glass they will bring paper to flame in seconds. The same is true of human beings – once their collective energy is focused on a challenge, there is little they can’t accomplish.

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important requires you to go against your basic wiring as a leader and focus on less so that your team can achieve more.

When you implement Discipline 1, you start by selecting one (or at the most two) extremely important goals, instead of trying to significantly improve everything all at once. We call this a wildly important goal (WIG) to make it clear to the team that this is the goal that matters most. Failure to achieve it will make every other accomplishment seem secondary, possibly even inconsequential.

Watch this video to begin setting goals that will bring clarity and focus to your most critical objectives.

To attend the GLS at a premier host site near you, register here by May 24, 2016 for the best rates. Check out the The Global Leadership Summit website for additional information and to see other members of the faculty.

Chris McChesney is a Wall Street Journal #1 bestselling author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution and is the Global Practice leader of Execution for Franklin Covey. Known for his high-energy and engaging presentations, McChesney has consulted with many of the world’s top brands and leverages this practical experience to help leaders from the boardroom to the front lines of an organization get better at executing the ideas that matter most.