Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

Each team engages in a simple weekly process that highlights successes, analyzes failures, and course-corrects as necessary, creating the ultimate performance-management system.

The cadence of accountability is a rhythm of regular and frequent team meetings that focus on the Wildly Important Goal^®. These meetings happen weekly, sometimes daily. They ideally last no more than 20 minutes. In that brief time, team members hold each other accountable for commitments made to move the score.

The secret to Discipline 4, in addition to the weekly cadence, are the commitments that team members create in the meeting. One by one, team members answer a simple question, “What are the one or two most important things I can do this week that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard?” In the meeting, each team member reports first if they met last week’s commitments, second if the commitments move the lead or lag measures on the scoreboard, and finally which commitments they will make for the upcoming week.

People are more likely to commit to their own ideas than to orders from above. When individuals commit to fellow team members instead of only to the boss, the commitment goes beyond professional job performance to become a personal promise. When the team sees they are having a direct impact on the Wildly Important Goal, they know they are winning, and nothing drives morale and engagement more than winning.