Episode 928: Four Disciplines and Time
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 928 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:06]Karen Lealand: [00:00:06] I'm Karen Tiber, Leland, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to recognize when you are not managing your energy well is key.
[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott mates.
[00:00:33]Scott Maderer: [00:00:33] So for instance, using that sales mentality, if you want to look at your sales instead of tracking sales, track, the activity that generates those sales, is it the promotions you run? Is it the phone calls that you make? Is it the number of clients that come in the door and if so, then go back another step.
[00:00:52] And what determines how many clients come in? You want to look for the predictive measures. Welcome, [00:01:00] and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:16] We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your impact. So that you can impact the word
[00:01:25]in today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about the four DX method. I share what these four disciplines are, but then I also relate them to how they can help you with managing your time and being more prudent. As we talk about stewarding your time.
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[00:02:09]There's a methodology known as the four disciplines of execution also called four DX that it's talked about in several books. There are several different Arthur's that have written various books on this idea. It's something that's pretty popular in certain business circles. I've seen it and I've read about it and I've used it in my own.
[00:02:32] And I wanted to talk a little bit about what four DX is and how it affects how you're productive and how you use your time. In, at the basic set of it, the four disciplines of execution is a goal setting system that looks at four ideas or four components. Of how you actually execute and achieve a goal.
[00:02:57] And those four components are focus, leverage, [00:03:00] engagement, and accountability. And I'll talk about each of those a little bit more in a month. But the idea behind it is to give you clarity and momentum as you work towards goals. And what's more, this is really designed to be working on what is known as a wig.
[00:03:17] A w I G a wildly important goal, or you might have heard it called a bee hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal. The idea is something that is ambitious, something that is big, something that is not. Difficult to accomplish, but something that is vitally important for you to incomplete. That's what a wildly important goal is.
[00:03:43] And one of the problems we have with goal setting is we often have dozens and dozens of goals, all of which are considered important to them. But the idea here is to focus in on just one or two big, hairy, audacious, [00:04:00] wildly important goals that would really move the needle for you. And that brings us to these disciplines.
[00:04:10] The first discipline is one of focus. In other words to achieve a goal, you've got to focus on it. You got to pay attention to it. But in the context of what happens in our day to day life, that can be much easier said than done, because the truth is always, you're going to have dozens of other opportunities and other goals come up each and every day, there's going to be distractions and being able to narrow your focus down on what is the actual important goal that I have.
[00:04:43] Is the nature of focus. We've talked about focus on the podcast before, have you tried to do everything? You'll very often do nothing. This is a component of that. The second one is leverage. And the idea here is about two [00:05:00] different components. One is flexibility because the truth is you're always going to have roadblocks.
[00:05:04] You're always going to have something new come up. You're always going to have struggles. And so how do you adjust to those changes? Are you locked in on only one way to achieve your goal? Are you able to pivot and be flexible? And then the second part is whether or not you're looking at what is known as a leading indicator or a lagging indicator?
[00:05:25] The truth is we often look at lagging indicators. We look at things like growth. We look at things like a revenue. These are lagging in that revenue is generated by sales, but those sales are generated by activity that came before. If you think about almost anything that you can measure, that measures a goal that tends to be a lagging.
[00:05:53] Leading indicators are things that are predictive and that you can be, you can use to influence you can [00:06:00] use to change. So for instance, using that sales mentality, if you want to look at your sales instead of tracking sales, Track the activity that generates those sales. Is it the promotions you run? Is it the phone calls that you make?
[00:06:15] Is it the number of clients that come in the door? And if so, then go back another step. And what determines how many clients come in the door? You want to look for? The predictive measures? The third discipline is one of engagement, figuring out a way to measure it. And make it easy to see where you stand at any moment, make a scoreboard, so to speak.
[00:06:38] And the last discipline is one of accountability. This is both self accountability and potentially accountability to others. It's regularly sitting down and assessing where you're at, where you're going and how are you doing so that you can course correct when necessary. All of these affect how your [00:07:00] productivity works and how you use your time.
[00:07:03] Because the truth is, if you think about it, if you're not focused on one goal, then you tend to spread your energy out and not achieve it. If you don't have flexibility in that second discipline of leverage, then you get so locked in on the one way to do it. That whenever anything goes wrong, it derails.
[00:07:22] And similarly, if you're looking at the lagging indicators all of the time, instead of finding the leading ones, then you just don't know what it is that you can do to actually affect change anyway. And therefore you waste all of your time. Just doing things at random, of course, engagement, knowing where you are and accountability, assessing how you're doing is vitally important as well.
[00:07:47] I've talked about all of these disciplines separately before on the podcast, but this is a way of looking at the four and how they fit together. And really focusing in on these [00:08:00] disciplines helps you get more done, but even more importantly helps you identify what are the things you actually should be doing?
[00:08:08] That's the leading indicators to achieve the thing that you most want to achieve. That's the wildly important goal. If you need help with this is one of those things that I help people dial into as a coach, feel free to reach out. I'd love to talk. This is more about the 40 X method and why it can really change the way you handle your time.
[00:08:32] And as we're going to talk about Friday, the way you handle your money. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:38]thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively live. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up [00:09:00] for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2.
[00:09:13] Time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.