The 12-week year

“We mistakenly believe that there is a lot of time left in the year, and we act accordingly. We lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important, every day is important, every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly!”

― Brian P. Moran, Michael Lennington

Let’s run a quick test. Step outside your office and ask 10 colleagues when they did their Christmas shopping last year: (1) A few days before Christmas, (2) A few weeks before Christmas, (3) Already a couple of months before Christmas. We bet that the vast majority of your colleagues will give the first response. Why is that? And how is this relevant to your business?

It’s relevant because the same thing also happens day in and day out at work. Let’s assume it is Monday. You give one of your coworkers the task to prepare a report by Friday, end of day. You will experience that he will likely do the bulk of the work on Friday. Or your spouse asks you to get something for your son’s birthday party from a local shop. The party is on Saturday afternoon. You will likely get the task done Saturday morning.

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10x Results "Million $ Idea"

If you give your team three months to complete an important project, it will take three months. If you give them one month, it will take one month. We, humans, take as much time for a task as we are given; if you give double the time, people will take double the time.

Interestingly enough, often the quality of the output will be better if you give people less time because they are more focused on the task.

So, the message is: Set ambitious deadlines. They should be doable if focused effort is applied. And they should not be arbitrary (asking for a report by Friday that you only need three weeks from now undermines morale and, generally, is not proper management).

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So, what is the main point? Set ambitious deadlines on the important deliverables. Get people to focus their time and energy on these tasks. Deprioritize everything that is not mission critical. People will fill up their days with low-priority work—and they will get something done—but not something that is mission critical. Make sure that they spend their time doing mission-critical work.

How does this relate to the 12-week year? We all have a mental picture of what a person or a company can accomplish in a year. This notion is also factored into the New Year’s resolutions or company plans that we prepare. Then, very soon, those important priorities get lost in the craze of the day to day. Don’t let this happen to your business. Here is how you do it:

Checklist: Your own 12-week year

• Mission-critical goals for the year: What are the three to five mission-critical goals that, if you were to achieve them by the end of the year, would make this year into a great year? Write them down. This could be a new product release, or a market entry into China, or a 20 percentage point improvement in customer NPS.

• What would it take: Now, ask yourself the question: “What would it take to achieve these goals by the end of the quarter?” Bear with me for a second and do not disregard this question right away. Ask yourself: “If these were our only goals for quarter end, how would we tackle them? Who do we need to put on the task? How would we structure it? How would we track progress and course-correct?” Next, ask yourself which lower-value tasks and goals could be stopped or deprioritized to give these goals more time and resources? These are powerful questions, and you will see that what seemed impossible only a few moments back now becomes more realistic.

• Action plan: Clearly, an important goal on a tight timeline needs to be managed accordingly. Prepare a three to four-page project charter: What are the key sub-deliverables along the way (and what are the deadlines)? Which people do we put on the task? Which other resources do we need to invest? How do we steer the project?

If you do not want to go all-in yet, we dare you to test this approach at least with a division, product line, or with one of your countries. You will see that it works wonders. You will get the all-important stuff done much faster. And you will realize that many of the lower-priority tasks at the end do not need to be done after all.

Moving to Action: Questions to Ask Yourself

• In which area of your business do you want to test the 12-week-year approach?

• How do you get your key people’s buy-in to the approach? Put them in the driver’s seat?

• How do you track progress and fine-tune the approach?

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This insight is a chapter from the book "10x Results: 240+ proven ideas to boost revenues, profits, customer loyalty, and employee engagement". The book is available on Amazon.