The 12 Week Year

Highlights

The fact is every week counts! Every day counts! Every moment counts! We need to be conscious of the reality that execution happens daily and weekly, not monthly or quarterly. Annualized thinking and planning

The annual execution cycle blinds people to the reality that life is lived in the moment and that ultimately success is created in the moment. It lulls people into believing that they can put things off—critical activity—and still accomplish what they desire, still achieve their goals.

If you find you’re lacking passion in either your business or in a relationship, it’s not a crisis of passion; it’s a crisis of vision.

Your business objectives are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end. Too often, managers and associates plan for business success but fail to connect with the real power source that will enable them to achieve that success. In essence, the personal vision is the reason why we work in the first place.

When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your personal objections and vision.

The bad news is that unless you intentionally engage the PFC, you are by default, relatively strengthening the portion of your brain that resists change and keeps you stuck.

Working from a plan has three distinct benefits: 1. It reduces mistakes. 2. It saves time. 3. It provides focus.

The reality is that planning is some of the most productive time you can have.

They create a strong connection between the actions you take today and the results you want to achieve.

Twelve week plans are both numbers- and activity-based. They create a strong connection between the actions you take today and the results you want to achieve.

With the 12 Week Year, the approach is to be great at a few things instead of mediocre at many things. In 12 week planning, you identify the top one to three things that will have the greatest impact, and pursue those with intensity.

Effective planning strikes a working balance between too much complexity and too little detail.

Your plan should start by identifying your overall goal(s) for the 12 weeks. The goal defines success for the 12 Week Year. It represents a great 12 weeks, and also represents intentional

Your current actions are creating your future. If you want to know what your future holds, look to your actions; they are the best predictor of your future. You want to predict your future health, look at your current eating and exercise habits. You want to predict the health of your marriage, look at your interactions with your spouse. You want to predict your career path and future income, look at the actions you take each business day. Your actions tell the story.

To use your weekly plan effectively, you will need to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes at the beginning of each week to review your progress from the past week and plan the upcoming one. In addition, the first five minutes of each day should be spent reviewing your weekly plan to plan that day’s activities.

In the 1960s Frederick Herzberg, an industrial psychologist, set out to determine what motivates people in the workplace. His extensive research identified the top two motivators as achievement and recognition.

A common misconception is that scoring damages self-esteem, but research indicates the opposite: Measurement builds self-esteem and confidence because it documents progress and achievement.

We all have a tendency from time to time to rationalize lackluster results, but with effective scorekeeping we are forced to confront the reality of our situation, even when it’s uncomfortable. While this can be difficult, the sooner we confront reality, the sooner we can shift our actions toward producing more desirable results.

Effective measurement captures both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decision making.

Leading lagging indicators

As a general rule, you should rarely change the plan unless you’ve been effectively completing your plan tactics and it is still not producing.

Physics tells us that for every action there is a reaction, so the good news is that every time you execute, you produce something—it may not be what you expected, but something will happen.

We urge you to strive for excellence, not perfection. We have found that if you successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan, then you will most likely achieve your objectives. Remember that your plan contains the top priorities that will add the most value and have the greatest impact. In other words, you only need to be 85 percent effective on the top priorities to achieve excellence!