A mining company in Mexico had $180M in annual revenue and 47 strategic priorities for the year. Forty-seven. When asked which two mattered most, their leadership team couldn’t agree.
Great strategy. Zero focus. Sound familiar?
We’re going to walk you through the 4-step system they used to fix it, and we’ll show you exactly how we’re using it at Malloy Industries right now, with real numbers.
Most CEOs can write a brilliant strategy. Very few can actually get their team to execute it.
Because every urgent demand from your business today swallows up your important deep work time for tomorrow.
There’s a name for that force (the “whirlwind”), and a four-step system (“4DX”) built to fight it.
You’re about to learn the 4 Disciplines of Execution!
Discipline 1: Focus On Your Wildly Important Goal (WIG)
Words I like: “If you ignore the urgent, it can kill you today. If you ignore the important, it can kill you tomorrow.” – Stephen Covey
The First Discipline: your company defines ONE specific Wildly Important Goal (WIG) and then aligns everyone’s work to achieve it. This can include department-specific WIGs that will increase the likelihood of achieving the company WIG. Everything else is maintained with 80% of the team’s time on the Whirlwind and 20% on the WIG.
Best WIG Format = “Increase Metric from X to Y by Date as measured by Measurement.”
Malloy Industries Examples
Company WIG = Increase monthly active clients from 10 to 18 by 4/15/26 as measured by 5k+ revenue from 18 different clients on a rolling 30-day basis.
Marketing WIG = Increase monthly qualified discovery calls completed from 9 to 28 by 4/15/26 as measured by booked, completed, and qualified by our team on a rolling 30-day basis.
Sales WIG = Increase monthly new Express Match™ closed from 1 to 4 by 4/15/26 as measured by signed DropboxSign contract + paid QuickBooks invoice on a rolling 30-day basis.
Fulfillment WIG = Increase monthly Express Match™ interviews facilitated from 10 to 15 by 4/15/26 as measured by completed interviews between future clients and fractional executives that our Client Service Manager scheduled and facilitated on a rolling 30-day basis.
Most CEOs struggle to pick just two because everyone wants their project to win. That argument is worth having because the friction is how you find out what actually matters. You probably already know. You just haven’t told the rest of the room that everything else can wait.
Pro Tip: When you struggle to decide on your WIG, ask this: “If every other part of the business stayed the same, what single change would have the greatest impact on our growth?” The right answer usually makes someone in the room uncomfortable. That’s the signal.
Discipline 2: Act On Your Lead Measures
A nonprofit hospital had a 26% patient satisfaction score. Bottom quarter nationally. They’d been tracking that number for months. Knowing it hadn’t moved.
So they stopped watching the score and started tracking specific nursing behaviors: introduce yourself by name, explain each medication, and check comfort before leaving. Within four months, satisfaction jumped from 26% to 76%.
That’s the difference between a lag measure and a lead measure.
A lag measure records what has already happened. Your revenue number, your churn rate, your patient satisfaction score. By the time you see it, the decisions that caused it are weeks old.
Lead measures are the behaviors your team can act on this week that predict the result.
They’re harder to find, but they’re the only numbers that actually change anything. Make sure you measure the cause, not just the result.
Pro Tip: Before locking in a lead measure, it needs to pass two tests. Does improving the lead measure predict improvement in the WIG’s lag measure? And is it influenceable…can your team control at least 80% of the outcome, or does it hinge on the market or the algorithm?
Discipline 3: Keep A Compelling Scoreboard
In 2006, Marriott Hotels wanted to move its Guest Satisfaction Index from 87% to 90%. They announced the goal. Nothing moved. So they built a scoreboard and posted it in the break room, updated weekly, showing only two numbers: the lead measure and the satisfaction score.
Anyone could glance at it and know in five seconds whether the hotel was winning or losing.
Within 10 months, the score hit 91%. Revenue per available room was up 5.6%. Employee engagement up 20%. Turns out that making winning visible makes a difference.
Your team cares more when there’s a number on the wall.
Your team cares even more when they created the scoreboard (bottom up, not top down), and they know exactly what lead measures to act on to improve the scoreboard.
A scoreboard isn’t the same as a dashboard. A dashboard is for whoever reviews performance. A scoreboard is for whoever is actively playing the game.
Pro Tip: The five-second rule: if a team member can’t tell whether they’re winning or losing within five seconds of looking at their scoreboard, you did it wrong. The goal is simplicity for each team member, not complexity for the leadership team.
Discipline 4: Create A Cadence Of Accountability
You probably already know what happens without the 4th discipline…
CEOs set the company’s Wildly Important Goal (WIG).
Teams identify their lead measures and set up the scoreboards.
Then the Whirlwind takes over again. Urgent fires every day.
Six weeks later, nobody remembers any of it.
The solution is a mandatory 20-minute weekly WIG meeting.
Each person says what they committed to last week and whether they did it. The team looks at the scoreboard. Each person names one thing they’ll do this week tied to the lead measures. That’s the whole meeting. Nothing else gets in.
The reason it works is that the pressure runs sideways, not top down. You’re not reporting to your manager. You’re telling the people across the table what you said you’d do. Most people can rationalize missing a manager’s target due to external forces. Not being true to your word and what you committed to your team out loud last week hits different.
Pro Tip: The moment an operational fire enters a WIG Session, the meeting is dead. Do NOT discuss IN the business topics in this meeting. Protect it like it’s the only thing standing between your strategy and another wasted quarter. Because it is.
What Happens Next?
Remember the mining company with 47 priorities?
They narrowed it to two WIGs. Within one year, EBITDA improved 108%. Production went up 21%. Medical accidents dropped 70%.
They didn’t hire more people. They didn’t work longer hours. They stopped trying to do everything and got ruthless about the two things that mattered most.
Here’s what we see with the 150+ CEOs we’ve worked with: most of them already know what their WIG should be.
CEOs just don’t have the senior leadership in the room to help them define the lead measures, build the scoreboard, and run the weekly cadence.
That’s exactly the gap a fractional executive fills.
You built a company that’s too important to be run on willpower alone. 4DX gives your team a way to protect your strategy from your own whirlwind.
Systems beat genius,
Mike
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help:
- If you know your WIG but don’t have the senior leadership to execute it, we should talk. Our free 30-minute Scalability Audit compresses 6 years and 150+ client experiences into one call, so you walk away knowing which fractional executive fits your biggest constraint. Talk to our Team to see if it’s a fit.
- Not sure yet? Our FAQ page dives deeper into pricing, the process, and how the fractional executive model works.