Most leaders already know this: strategy matters, but execution is where you win or lose.
Organizations invest heavily in strategic plans, dashboards, and performance frameworks. They set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and hold regular reviews to talk about the numbers.
And yet, despite all this effort, many strategies still never come to life. Teams are busy. Metrics are tracked. But the few goals that really matter don’t move in a meaningful way.
The problem usually isn’t a lack of intelligence or ambition. It’s that metrics alone don’t change behavior.
To close the gap between strategy and results, you need more than OKRs and KPIs. You need a small number of goals that truly matter, expressed in a way people can act on—and a simple system to help them change how they work, week after week.
That’s where Wildly Important Goals® (WIGs) and the 4 Disciplines of Execution® (4DX) come in.
Every organization uses some combination of goals and measures. The language might differ, but the intention is similar: decide what matters and track whether you’re making progress.
It helps to be clear about what each of these terms really means.
OKR stands for Objective and Key Results.
The Objective states where you want to go. It’s often ambitious and directional—“what” you’re trying to achieve.
The Key Results describe how you’ll know you’re getting there—the measurable outcomes or milestones that indicate progress.
For example:
Objective: Strengthen our culture and significantly reduce voluntary turnover.
Key Results:
Achieve an average employee engagement score of at least 8/10 each quarter.
Launch a company-wide development program by the end of Q3.
Implement weekly, structured 1-on-1s between managers and team members.
In theory, if you hit the key results, you should be on track to achieve the objective. In practice, reality is messier. You might achieve every key result and still miss the underlying objective if you weren’t focusing on the right factors.
OKRs are useful for alignment and direction—but they are not, by themselves, a complete execution system.
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator.
KPIs are specific metrics that track performance in important areas, such as:
Revenue growth or margin
Customer satisfaction or retention
On-time delivery
Quality, safety, or reliability
Engagement scores, turnover rates, or absenteeism
They tell you how you’re doing in a given domain. You can track them over time, compare them to targets, and break them down by division, function, or team.
For example, a people-focused KPI set might include:
Quarterly engagement score
Voluntary turnover rate
Absenteeism rate
Participation in learning and development
Time-to-fill for key roles
KPIs become truly powerful when they are clearly connected to meaningful goals. But on their own, they can be confusing or overwhelming, especially when there are many of them and little clarity about what people should actually do differently.
Many organizations blur OKRs and KPIs together, but they play distinct roles:
OKRs communicate direction and ambition. They describe where you’re heading and the big steps you believe will get you there.
KPIs provide ongoing performance signals. They describe how you’re doing in specific areas, whether or not you’ve set a formal OKR.
Both can be useful:
When you’re changing direction or pursuing something new, OKRs help articulate that shift.
When you’re monitoring ongoing performance or comparing periods, KPIs help you see trends.
The issue is not that OKRs and KPIs are wrong. It’s that even together, they usually stop at measurement. They tell you what you hope to achieve and how you’re trending—but they don’t tell you how to get a whole organization to behave differently long enough to change those numbers.
That’s where Wildly Important Goals change the game.
A Wildly Important Goal (WIG®) is not just another target on a long list. It’s the one breakthrough result that would make a disproportionate difference if you achieved it.
A genuine WIG has three characteristics:
It carries major strategic impact and a clear performance gap.
The metric is critical and stubborn—stuck, declining, or not at the level your strategy requires. If you could close that gap, it would materially change your position.
It is unlikely to be achieved in the “whirlwind.”
The whirlwind is the urgent work required just to keep the business running. A true WIG will not happen by accident or with “business as usual.” It requires concentrated, special effort.
It demands collective behavior change.
Achieving the WIG will require many people to work differently or more consistently, not just a single leader making a decision or signing a budget. That’s why it’s hard—and why it matters.
These criteria are often missing when organizations set OKRs or design KPIs. WIGs force you to ask a tougher question:
“Of everything we could focus on, what one outcome would make the biggest difference—and will almost certainly fail unless we treat it as special?”
Most organizations already have more goals than their people can realistically absorb.
Every initiative, metric, and OKR may seem important, but the human capacity for change is limited. When you ask teams to chase too many priorities at once, they end up doing none of them exceptionally well.
The first discipline of the 4 Disciplines of Execution—Focus on the Wildly Important—is about narrowing that focus.
You still run your day-to-day operations. You still care about multiple KPIs. But you deliberately choose one WIG that:
You are willing to invest disproportionate attention and energy in.
You believe will meaningfully advance your strategy if you succeed.
Your teams can understand, remember, and rally around together.
When that happens, something important shifts. People stop feeling like they’re trying to “do everything” and start feeling like they’re playing a winnable game.
You can think of it this way:
OKRs often describe where you want to go and how you’ll measure progress.
KPIs show how you’re performing across many dimensions of the business.
WIGs define the breakthrough you’re going to achieve by changing how people behave.
A WIG:
Is expressed in a simple, concrete format: “From X to Y by When.”
Has a clear start line, finish line, and deadline.
Is narrow enough that teams can act on it every week.
Is important enough that not achieving it has real consequences.
For example:
Reduce waste from €44M to €31M by year-end.
Increase 5-star guest satisfaction from 42% to 55% in 12 months.
Improve degrees and certificates earned from 6,300 to 7,000 in 18 months.
Raise patient assessment scores from 81.1 to 83.2 within a year.
Crucially, WIGs cascade. The organization or business unit sets a primary WIG. Then teams create sub-WIGs—supporting goals that contribute to the main WIG from their part of the business. Everyone can see how their work connects to the breakthrough result.
In many cases, WIGs complement existing OKRs and KPIs. You might choose a WIG that’s directly related to an existing strategic objective, or identify a new breakthrough that your current metrics haven’t fully captured.
OKRs and KPIs help you describe the mountain. WIGs are how you actually climb it.
Choosing a WIG sounds simple—and it is conceptually—but it takes real discipline in practice.
A helpful way to decide is to look at your potential goals through two lenses:
Strategic impact: If we achieved this, how much would it move our strategy forward?
Risk of non-execution: How likely is it that this won’t happen without special focus?
Plot your candidate goals on a simple matrix with these two axes. Goals that sit high on both—high impact, high risk of being missed—are strong WIG candidates.
You’ll often discover that:
Some goals are highly important, but already have strong systems behind them and are likely to happen as part of the existing whirlwind.
Other goals are challenging, but wouldn’t make a truly transformative difference if achieved.
A few goals stand out as both strategically critical and execution-fragile. Those are your best WIG options.
A classic example: in aviation, passenger safety is strategically vital—but also highly regulated and deeply embedded. It’s unlikely to be neglected. On-time arrivals, however, are both strategically significant and at constant risk in the whirlwind of operations. Improving on-time performance can be an excellent WIG because it requires widespread behavior change and creates clear value.
Once you’ve identified a potential WIG, you sharpen it into “From X to Y by When,” making sure it’s ambitious yet achievable.
Identifying a WIG is only the first step. To actually achieve it, you need a simple, repeatable system that helps people change how they work.
That’s what the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is designed to do. It focuses on the behaviors that move your WIG, not just the outcomes you worry about.
We’ve covered this one already: choose the right WIG and communicate it clearly, so everyone knows what matters most.
Without this clarity, execution efforts scatter. With it, people can prioritize.
Most organizations obsess over lag measures—the results that show up after the fact, such as revenue, profit, or satisfaction scores. They’re essential, but you can’t change them once they’ve arrived.
Lead measures, by contrast, are the few behaviors or activities that drive those results and are within your control right now. For example:
For a revenue WIG, lead measures might include the number of high-quality discovery meetings or proposals sent to ideal clients.
For a safety WIG, they might include specific checks completed or training events held.
In 4DX, you identify the lead measures that have the strongest predictive relationship with your WIG, then focus your team’s energy there. When leads move, lags follow.
People play differently when they can see the score.
In a strong execution system, teams don’t track their WIG in complex reports that only a few leaders see once a quarter. Instead, they maintain a simple, visible scoreboard that shows:
The WIG (“From X to Y by When”)
The current result
The key lead measures and whether they’re on track
The scoreboard is designed so that anyone on the team can quickly answer: “Are we winning or losing right now?” That visibility turns abstract goals into a live game people can influence.
Finally, 4DX builds weekly accountability into the rhythm of work.
Teams hold short, focused check-ins where members:
Review the scoreboard.
Report on last week’s commitments to move a lead measure.
Make new commitments for the coming week.
These are not status meetings. They’re about individuals making and keeping small, meaningful promises that push the WIG forward. Over time, that rhythm creates momentum and habit change.
Even with OKRs and KPIs in place, many organizations fall into similar traps:
Unclear goals. Only a small fraction of employees can confidently state their organization’s top goals. Without clarity, real engagement is impossible. 4DX forces leaders to define and communicate a small number of WIGs in plain language.
Too many priorities. Leaders often set an ambitious list of goals, splitting focus and diluting effort. WIGs narrow the field, helping teams focus on less so they can achieve more.
Leaders and teams tracking the wrong things. Senior leaders sometimes choose goals based on what’s easy to measure or politically visible rather than what’s truly strategic and at risk. Frontline teams often track only lag measures (like revenue) and ignore the behaviors that drive them. 4DX helps both groups identify and act on meaningful lead measures.
Little accountability for follow-through. OKRs and KPIs may be reviewed quarterly, but there’s no weekly mechanism to adjust behavior. By the time you see the lag results, it’s too late to influence them. Discipline 4 installs a cadence where teams can course-correct in real time.
No focus on behavior change. Many goal frameworks tell you what to hit and when. Few address how you will get hundreds or thousands of people to consistently do something different. 4DX is built specifically around behavior change—turning strategy into sustainable habits.
OKRs can inspire. KPIs can inform. But neither, on their own, will guarantee that your most important goals are actually achieved.
To turn strategy into results, you need:
A single Wildly Important Goal (and related sub-WIGs) that everyone can understand and care about.
A focus on lead measures that translate intention into specific behaviors.
A live scoreboard that makes progress visible.
A regular cadence of accountability that keeps execution alive in the middle of the whirlwind.
When you layer WIGs and the 4 Disciplines of Execution on top of your existing OKR and KPI frameworks, you don’t discard what you already have. You give it power.
Your objectives stop being words on a page. Your metrics stop being numbers in a report. Instead, they become part of a living system where people see the goal, know what to do about it this week, and feel responsible for the outcome.
That’s how you move from “strategically sophisticated” to consistently successful—and how you turn OKRs and KPIs into real breakthrough results.