Is lack of discipline causing your organization's underperformance?

When you hear the word "discipline" in the context of your work, does your mind go to a negative place or a positive place?

For example, consider discipline as punishment, as in, "I disciplined my child for fighting with his sibling." This way of using the word typically feels negative.

On the other hand, consider discipline as focused effort, as in, "Mastery in our craft requires a sense of discipline." This way of using the word probably feels positive.

For the sake of this article, we are going to unpack the positive form of discipline, and show why it is critical for performance, why it is often missing in teams, and what you can do about it.

Thank goodness for teachers

Could you imagine being a professional educator in a grade, middle, or high school? You're doing some of the most important work—preparing the next generation to become productive members of society. But these are kids after all, and often they can lose attention or get rowdy. So what can we learn from teachers who are able to create discipline while maintaining motivation for learning?

One study set out to understand this relationship to see if discipline could create motivation. In this study, they measured student motivation and the teachers' classroom "operating system."

To understand the teachers' operating system, they measured how teachers created discipline in the classroom.

• A teacher could use positive approaches to maintain discipline. For example, the teacher "attracts our attention by making the lesson more interesting."
• Or the teacher could use negative approaches to maintain discipline. For example, the teacher "makes us feel ashamed if we are not disciplined."

They found that the teachers who created positive forms of discipline also had the most motivated students. In other words, discipline done the right way was motivating. It increased the students' sense of play to learn, while also decreasing their pressure.

Yada, yada, yada

Discipline in the classroom is one thing, but what does discipline look like in the often challenging work done to drive growth? For example, driving growth often requires innovation, creativity, and problem-solving. Can these types of work be managed through motivating discipline?

Once Jerry Seinfeld, the famous comedian and namesake of the Seinfeld comedy show, was asked how he is so funny. His answer was discipline.

He went so far as to say, "My guiding rule is to systematize." For example, every single day he has a timed writing session where he has to write jokes. When the alarm goes off, he's allowed to stop. When he completes his writing session, he goes to his calendar and draws a large black "X" on that day. His aim is to never break the chain. With this discipline, he creates a lot of jokes, which is where his greatest jokes come from.

This kind of discipline can be motivating at work. It can make the work itself more fun, and you can feel a sense of progress every day. Moreover, these types of high-discipline systems can be applied to companies, not just comedians.

The challenge of creating discipline in organizations

Creating discipline in organizations is hard for four reasons:

1. It's easy to create discipline for the wrong things. Many organizations create discipline for executing tasks, but instead, they should create discipline for having an impact. Those are different things.
2. It's easy to create demotivating discipline. Many organizations use pressure to create discipline (e.g., you'll be penalized or shamed if you're undisciplined).
3. Organizational discipline is collective, not individual. Teamwork is collective in nature, and thus the systems of discipline have to be collective. Organizations need single systems of discipline throughout.
4. Leaders lack the skill to create discipline. Many leaders do not know how to create positive discipline on their teams. They worry that doing so would alienate the team and harm their relationships. So rather than try to build that discipline, they allow their team to descend into progress-destroying chaos.

To solve these four barriers to discipline, companies should take an org-wide approach that leverages the cutting edge of technology.

The six steps to creating a high-discipline performance culture

1. don't write values, write performance habits

There's been an ongoing debate for some time—should a company feel like a family or a team? Many CEOs prefer "team" because they cannot promise lifetime employment. But there is a third option—a practice. The purpose of this practice is to master the craft needed to have an impact.

For example, a healthcare network might define itself as an integrated practice that aims to deliver the best healthcare outcomes. Or Apple might define itself as an integrated practice that creates the most empowering technologies for people.

To do so well, you wouldn't articulate values in the way that most companies do. Instead, you'd articulate the practices or habits that you believe will lead to performance. It is these habits that form the basis of how you will create discipline. By articulating them centrally you give your team leaders the air cover to maintain discipline even if it is uncomfortable for them.

We've written about this concept in a recent article, so if you want to learn more about how to replace values with habits, read more: Values statements are a waste of time.

2. use job descriptions to help colleagues enlist

Most job descriptions fail in three critical ways:

1. They fail to make the job motivating.
2. They fail to describe the tactical and adaptive aspects of the job. By doing so, sometimes employees say, "well that's just not in my job description," when asked to perform adaptively.
3. They fail to set the expectation of discipline. By doing so, it is harder to create supportive accountability for discipline.

Because this critical tool fails in these important ways, companies lose the opportunity to enlist their colleagues.

Instead, make sure you don't shortchange the job description. Then, in your interview process, make sure that the candidate understands what is being asked of them and wants that role. In the final interviews, ask the candidate explicitly if they would want help to create the kind of discipline needed for excellence.

We've written about the problem with job descriptions - you can read more here: How to write job descriptions that actually motivate people.

3. Sacrosanct workflows

When managing performance, every team has to manage five inputs - or "factors" - and usually in two time horizons:

Each of these six cadences is critical to forming motivating discipline.

We've written extensively about these factors of performance. Read more here: How executive teams can diagnose broken cultures.

4. Carve time

Fire drills or shocks to the system destroy discipline. For example, you may have great personal discipline around physical fitness, but when you have family in town, suddenly that habit breaks.

Companies have fire drills constantly - for many teams, on a weekly basis. Those fire drills get in the way of growth-oriented work and break habits.

Instead, the three quarterly and three weekly performance cadences above should be scheduled and held every week without exception. When the team leader is on vacation, there should be a designated second and third person ready to lead those cadences.

5. make it hard to fail

These cadences are not easy for leaders to run.

For example, consider the quarterly strategic alignment cadence (i.e., the Strategy Check). An average leader would need to:

1. Remind the team of its destination
2. Help the team see its opportunities
3. Share the leader's view of the top strategies
4. Be open to other ideas from the team
5. Clarify ownership
6. Clarify the scope of each strategy
7. Make it motivating and inspiring
8. Clarify next steps
9. Document everything for senior leaders

Typically, leaders feel the need to have weeks of prep time, pre-meetings, and post-meetings. As one leader in a major tech company shared with me, their team's strategic alignment process takes him a month of prep time every quarter.

Instead, today's state of the art are AI leader co-pilots like the Factor.AI platform. Factor guides each team through each of these workflows like an exceptional coach or chief-of-staff would using AI-generated guidance and examples. Factor makes it much easier to run these workflows without all the bureaucratic extra meetings.

6. Maintain supportive accountability

Like discipline, accountability has good and bad flavors. Being concerned with finding the "single throat to choke" is a blame-based form of accountability. Helping people achieve what they want to achieve is supportive accountability.

The previous five steps pave the way for supportive accountability, but there are three more things the organization needs to do:

1. First - the performance cadences above should be measured - not only to see if they happened, but also to see if they happened well.
2. Second - when teams are not executing their performance cadences well, the organization should provide coaching to help them break through their obstacles.
3. Third - this is perhaps the hardest thing for companies to do, but the executive team should role model these cadences. Role modeling discipline is needed to create discipline.

By doing the above, you can create accountability for the kind of discipline that drives motivation and performance.

Read more about supportive accountability: Stop blaming me and calling it accountability.

Carry it forward

Today, many organizations are realizing that they lack discipline. For example, when executives feel like their colleagues cannot be trusted to work remotely, what they are really saying is they lack discipline. The hope is that getting into the office will allow them to create discipline more easily.

But in reality, hybrid work in some way is here to stay, and teams that couldn't create discipline remotely are unlikely to do a great job of it in the office either.

Like Jerry Seinfeld, your organization needs an operating system that creates the motivating form of discipline. These kinds of high-discipline operating systems have a few markers:

1. They emphasize the management and measurement of progress.
2. They don't put pressure on the outcomes, but they do require participants to follow the workflows.
3. They are subject to change if they don't produce the right outcomes.

At this stage, it has never been easier to implement these kinds of operating systems at scale. So what are you waiting for?

If you know you want to create a step-change in discipline, but don't know how, drop us a line. We're here to help.

Learn more

• Primed to Perform - the science of performance
• Values statements are a waste of time
• How to write job descriptions that actually motivate people
• How executive teams can diagnose broken cultures.
• Stop blaming me and calling it accountability

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