Lessons - How to Execute When Everything Feels Urgent | Chris McChesney - Author of 4 Disciplines of Execution (#1 WSJ Bestseller)

Summary

Success Story Podcast with Scott D. Clary

Episode: Lessons - How to Execute When Everything Feels Urgent | Chris McChesney – Author of 4 Disciplines of Execution
Date: October 6, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lessons episode, host Scott D. Clary sits down with Chris McChesney, co-author of the bestselling book The 4 Disciplines of Execution, to discuss how organizations and leaders can successfully turn strategy into tangible results, especially in fast-paced, high-urgency environments. The conversation explores the recently re-released edition of the book, new insights into leading leaders, and tactical frameworks for cutting through daily chaos—known as "the whirlwind"—to focus on what drives lasting success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What’s New in The 4 Disciplines of Execution Second Edition

• 30% New Content: The re-release adds significant practical advice, especially around:
  • Where and where not to apply The 4 Disciplines
  • Helping leaders who aren’t professional project managers succeed in project settings
  • Tackling sustainability—how to keep execution frameworks fresh and effective over time
  • Deeper dives into the challenges of leading leaders
• Key Quote:
  “This is not, you know, vitamin C. This is not good for what ails you. This, this is heavy medicine.”
  — Chris McChesney [01:08]

2. The Challenge of Leading Leaders

• Scott notes: The move from being an individual contributor to managing other leaders is not taught in school and is one of the hardest transitions.
• Chris reveals: He and co-author Jim Hewling are already at work on a potential book focused on leading leaders, acknowledging it as a neglected but vital topic.
• Key Quote:
  “There’s a lot on leadership in a general sense, but in terms of the specific dynamics of when you’re a leader and you have to lead another leader…We’ve not seen a great deal on those unique dynamics.”
  — Chris McChesney [03:13]

3. Obstacles to Effective Execution: Ambiguity & The Whirlwind of Urgency

• Two Primary Barriers:
  • Uncertainty: People don’t resist change inherently—they resist the uncertainty that change brings.
  • Urgency: The “day job”—nicknamed “the whirlwind”—creates endless urgent tasks that eclipse longer-term, important goals.
• Insightful Analogy:
  “You can live in the whirlwind and not move on anything strategic... In the moment when a human being is confronted with a choice between something that's happening right now, or spending energy on something far more important but less urgent, the human default does not go to importance. The human default goes to urgency.”
  — Chris McChesney [04:48]

4. The Four Disciplines of Execution—A Tactical Breakdown

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important

• Definition: Select one or two critical goals to focus on with disproportionate energy.
• Tactics: Assign clear start and finish lines, and establish deadlines.
• Leader’s Priority:
  “I want to know what’s your big bet, what you play right now? Otherwise, I know if they don’t have that, they’re on the defensive.”
  — Tim Tesopoulos (quoted by Chris) [07:36]

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

• Definition: Identify and act on actions that have the most leverage (predictive and influenceable)—not just on lagging or ultimate outcome metrics.
• Example: For weight loss, lead measures are diet and exercise—not just recording weight.
• Critical Distinction:
  “Lead measures are not predictive indicators. Lead measures are true leverage. They’re influenceable and they’re predictive.”
  — Chris McChesney [10:22]
• Application: Limit teams to a single wildly important goal at a time; each team crafts their own lead measures.

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

• Definition: Use visible, simple scoreboards (“player’s scoreboards,” not “coach’s spreadsheets”) so teams know the score and engage in a “game on” mindset.
• Productization: Reference to the 4DX OS app used by 500,000+ people.
• Memorable Analogy:
  “It’s much more like [the scoreboard] at an athletic event than it is the spreadsheet they hand the coach at halftime.”
  — Chris McChesney [12:08]

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

• Definition: Regular (weekly) cycles where individual team members make and review specific, personal commitments in addition to their routine work.
• Outcome: Drives force against leverage, creating momentum without overwhelm.
• Analogy: With lead measures set, commitments might include small, personal steps (e.g., buying a gym membership or ingredients for a healthy meal).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Execution in the Face of Urgency:
  “You can live in the whirlwind and not move on anything strategic.”
  — Chris McChesney [05:29]

• On Focus:
  “People can handle the day job plus one. All right, so they got one wig.”
  — Chris McChesney [11:17]

• On Scoreboards:
  “We think of it this way. It’s not a coach’s scoreboard…This is a player’s scoreboard.”
  — Chris McChesney [12:04]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• [00:00] Scott frames the episode: Translating strategy into impactful action.
• [01:05] Chris details the updates and intent behind the new edition of The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
• [02:45] Start of “leading leaders” discussion and future projects in that domain.
• [04:28] Chris identifies the real barriers to execution: uncertainty and urgency (“the whirlwind”).
• [06:50] Dissects Discipline 1: Focus and the Chick-fil-A leadership principle.
• [09:56] Unpack Discipline 2: Lead measures and difference from predictive indicators.
• [12:00] Explanation of Discipline 3: Keeping score and engaging teams.
• [12:56] The role of accountability—Discipline 4—and everyday commitment examples.

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Final Thoughts

The episode delivers a practical yet inspiring roadmap for leaders at all levels, laying out not just what to focus on, but why discipline and clarity matter more than ever in environments of constant urgency. The conversation emphasizes that mastery of execution isn’t about resisting chaos, but about outmaneuvering it—through unwavering focus, intelligent leverage, visibility of progress, and relentless accountability. These frameworks are positioned as essential tools whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, a leader of teams, or, eventually, a leader of leaders.

Transcript

[Scott]

In this lessons episode, discover how the four disciplines of execution help leaders turn strategy into action and focus on what truly drives results. Learn how to overcome uncertainty and urgency that block progress. Understand why clarity and leverage determine successful outcomes and explore how accountability and focus sustain long term performance in any organization. So let's queue up the four disciplines and what they're actually so four disciplines are four disciplines that are focused on executing. Executing in a business context, in a leadership context. This is obviously what the, you know, this is the book that you just re released today.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

Today's actually the day.

[Scott]

Today. Actually today we're recording it on Tuesday, April 20th. Yeah. So congratulations. That's exciting. It's very exciting. So actually, so what, what's the, what's the re release about? Like if people have already checked out this book, what is the re release? And then I actually want to go into some of the more tactical stuff. But I'm just curious, what's the.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

Yeah, yeah. So the, if you're familiar with the four disciplines, the, the re release, about 30% new content. Really a lot of focus on where to use this approach and where not to use this approach. This is not, you know, vitamin C. This is not good for what ails you. This, this is heavy medicine. Right. And where do leaders apply these disciplines and where not to. How do leaders of leaders. We go into much more detail on how organizational leaders apply this. We do a lot with leaders that are finding themselves managing projects and they're not project managers. How do you apply the disciplines to a project goal instead of a performance type goal? And then finally sustainability. A lot of organizations have been at this for almost a decade. How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it alive? So those are kind of, I guess the headlines or the highlights of how of what's new in the second edition.

[Scott]

And they're valid points because I can, I can tell you from personal experience the, the leaders of leaders point is something that nobody really nobody learns in school. It's a very difficult thing. It's one of the most difficult things to figure out. And then also just the project management piece when it's again another leader of leaders things when you're managing tasks that if you're in sales and you love selling and you move into sales manager and you move into director sales and you move into VP sales. Well now you have to manage projects and now and actually that's one of the reasons why some people don't like those executive roles because there's a lot of leaders of leadership type requirements and There's a lot of project management type requirements that is so far from the actual act. Right. Anyways, good, good advice and we'll get into it.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

By the way, Scott, I'm glad you said that about leaders of leaders. I'm glad that because the. One of the co authors of the book, Jim Hewling and I are actually starting right now. We had the same thought you did. We're starting right now, another work on leading leaders. And we don't know if that's the name of the book.

[Scott]

It's a damn good name and it's the most difficult thing.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

And we had to cut this chapter short. We had so much on this topic and we had to say, Scott, we said the same thing you did. There's not a lot out there. There's a lot on leadership in a general sense, but in terms of the specific dynamics of when you're a leader and you have to lead another leader, that is not. At least we've not seen a great deal on those unique dynamics. So that is something that we're looking at right now.

[Scott]

It's a good topic. And I know that the audience here, some of them, everybody here is career focused trying to build something themselves. So I would just say if you aren't leading leaders right now, regardless of whether or not you're starting a side hustle building something, you're an entrepreneur and you want to build something in an organization, there will be a point where this will be applicable in your career. It may not be today, but figure it out so you don't have to go through hell and trial by fire when you're actually living it anyway. So let's.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

This will be the reward of success.

[Scott]

Exactly, exactly.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

You will be leading leaders. That's right.

[Scott]

That's the coming.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Okay. So we're trying to remove ambiguity. We're trying to take on tasks that ambiguity so that everything's clear, everything is comforting. We see the end result, we see the vision. So first of all, how do we do that? And then how do we apply say these four principles to executing when we have that clear vision? So first, how do we get rid of that ambiguity?

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

Yeah, so let's do this. Let's. Let's put up sort of two obstacles and then let's maybe walk through the disciplines. So the one obstacle is it's not that people, we think this, but it's not that people necessarily resist change. We think people resist change because it looks like they're resisting change a lot. What they resist is uncertainty. People initiate change quite A bit. So it's really unfair to say that it's a human dynamic to resist change. What people resist is the uncertainty that often comes with changes. Okay, so if you said uncertainty is sort of one issue, and then here's the second issue that gets in the way of execution, and it's. It's urgency. It took us a long time to sort of see this. This was hiding in plain sight that any goal that you're trying to achieve, any strategic priority, anything that's really important, will always compete with the day job. And we've given the day job a nickname called the whirlwind. Right. So this day job, this whirlwind always feels urgent, immediate. Oh, I've got to get back to so and so. Oh, I promised I'm going to have that done. Oh, I've got to do this. Oh, I've still got seven unanswered emails. Oh, oh, oh. Right. And so we're working all day long. And you can live in the whirlwind and not move on anything strategic. And here's the other problem. In the moment when a human being is confronted with a choice between something that's happening right now or spending energy on something far more important but less urgent, the human default does not go to importance. The human default goes to urgency. This is the great barrier to strategic execution. We're not wired for it. We are wired for immediacy. So you think about those two factors, this resistance to uncertainty and this whirlwind of urgency that we have to execute through. So if you just think of those two things, then what are the four disciplines? All right, well, the first one is called discipline. One is called focus on the wildly important. And it's a decision that a leader or an entrepreneur or professional person makes. When they say, I'm going to give something disproportionate energy, I'm not going to ignore it. Doesn't mean I got to ignore everything else. Everything else can go into whirlwind, but something's going to get disproportionate energy. And I'm going to. And not only am I going to narrow the focus, but I'm going to. It's a little bit like focusing a camera. I'm going to bring it into focus. I'm going to give it a starting line, I'm going to give it a finish line. I'm going to give it a deadline. And there's a whole science around how you do that in an organizational setting and how you do that between levels. But that's what the first discipline is all about. The first discipline is all about targeting. Getting really clear on. Well, let me give you a quote. I really like this. This was something that was said to us 20 years ago by the gentleman who's now the president of Chick Fil A. He was VP of operations at the time. His name is Tim Tesopoulos. And he said, when I meet with a leader, so you got one of the. You got one of the planet's really good operators, right? He said, when I meet with a leader, the first thing I want to know is, where is that leader? Putting disproportionate focus. Where are they spending? Like, I don't want to know your seven priorities. I want to know. I want to know what's your big bet? What you play right now? Otherwise, I know if they don't have that, they're on the defensive. They're just.

[Scott]

They're just trying to putting out fires, right?

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

They're putting out fires. They just want to get through the week, right? And he says, it really helps me know where a leader's head is. And I think that little statement started to influence the way we use the discipline. So. So I got. Discipline one is about what I'm going after. Discipline two is called act on the lead measures. So if discipline one is about the principle of focus, discipline two is the principle of leverage. It basically says, look, I've just identified something that by definition, I can't move, otherwise I wouldn't have identified. I've just deliberately picked this really important thing that's really hard. And so if you think about a rock that's too heavy to move. Yeah. And then you picture a lever, you get a fulcrum, you get a lever under there, right? And you know, what are the characteristics of a lever? Well, a lever, unlike the rock, you can move it. The lever is influenceable. And when the lever moves, the rock moves. So the lever's predictive. And so for 20 years, we have been had our heads into this idea of where's the leverage? Okay? So the classic example that everybody gets is weight loss. So people know, okay, if losing weight is the heavy rock, I've just not been able to accomplish, right? Diet and exercise really are the lever, right? I could act. I don't always act on them, but I can, right? And they're predictive. If I stay with it, it works, right? Sometimes we don't believe it works, but it works, right? So it's predictive and influenceable. And what we found is that in every field of Human endeavor. If you can get the targets low enough down to where the work is happening, you can find leverage points. You can find what we call lead measures now. So a lead measure, predictive and influenceable. It's not the same as a predictive indicator. Just one little distinction on this. If I was trying to grow corn, right, and crop production was my wildly important goal, that's what we call the targets in discipline one. We call them wigs or wildly important goals. My wildly important goal or my lag measure, right, Was crop growth. Like, similar to weight loss. A predictive indicator of crop growth would be rainfall. Right? We had. We have a lot of rainfall. We're going to have a good crop growth.

[Scott]

Okay, well, you can't control it.

[Author/Expert on Four Disciplines of Execution]

Can't. Very good, Scott. Right? It's predictive, but it ain't influenceable. Right? Lead measures are not predictive indicators. Lead measures are true leverage. They're influenceable and they're predictive. All right? So getting so you might have an organization with eight, nine different teams, each team. We really limit you to one wildly important goal per team per work group at a time. This is what we found. People can handle the day job plus one. All right, so they got one wig. Their team has been very involved in creating the lead measures. Discipline three now is called keep a compelling scoreboard. And it's really about. For me, it's about throwing the game on switch. Like, that's. To me, that's a tangible. It's a binary switch when someone goes, all right, it's live game on, right? And I engage. And the hypothesis that you've created in discipline one and discipline two doesn't put it into motion. But the minute you go game on. And for us, that's been a scoreboard. So we have an app4DX OS that we've got over a half a million people on right now utilizing. And in very simple terms, it's not like a business scoreboard. It's not like a spreadsheet. It's not like a coach. We think of it this way. It's not a coach's scoreboard. You need those. You have those. This is a player's scoreboard. Okay? So if you. If you think about the scoreboard at any athletic event, it's much more like that than it is the spreadsheet. They hand the coach at halftime. So that's discipline three. Does the team. Can we take what we did in disciplines one and two and can we make it go game on? And the discipline four is create a cadence of accountability and that is every week, right? Every team that owns a scoreboard, each individual making commitments and then reporting the next week. Like, in addition to the hundred things I got to do this week, what's the one or two things that are going to ensure we do the lead measures? Like, if my lead measures are diet and exercise, right, what would a commitment be? We'll do diet and exercise. No, no, no, no, no. We know that my commitment might be it's going to rain next week, so I'm going to get that gym membership because I hate running in the rain. Or I'm going to go to Whole Foods because I've got these recipes, but I don't have the ingredients right. And I've got to. I've got to, right. Want to make sure that I'm not eating junk and that I'm hitting that calorie lead measure. So discipline one, get the focus. Discipline two, get the leverage. Discipline three, game on. And then discipline four, if you've ever heard the adage force against leverage, that's right. That's applying that force. So what we found is by doing that, we're able to drive activities into an otherwise schedule of urgency and. And do it in a way that it doesn't feel overwhelming to people where they're like, I don't even know where to start.

[Scott]

Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.