4DX Brings Out NVC Team Spirit

Team spirit and a lot of laughter was in the air for the first Northwest Vista College 4DX Summit “Celebrating Spring and Summer 2014 WIG Accomplishments,” which brought different areas of the college together to showcase their scorecards or dashboards for their Wildly Important Goals (WIGS).

The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is a simple, repeatable set of practices for organizations and individuals to focus on what is important, execute strategic priorities, and achieve superb results. The 4DX methodology involves four disciplines: focusing on the wildly important, acting on lead measures, keeping a compelling scoreboard, and creating a cadence of accountability.

Each 4DX team was provided a few minutes to present their goal, their progress to date and lessons learned to the larger 4DX NVC community. Some of the team goals included increasing degree audits, advising more students, increasing Web traffic, adjunct evaluations and mentoring or visiting with students about the importance of completing an associate degree.

Most of the college departments demonstrated their enthusiasm through their creative score cards that featured “South Park,” “Kill Bill,” Super Mario Brothers, Pac Man, a jungle, race cars and so on. Plaques were given to teams who achieved and completed their goal and award pins were also presented to teams that have and continue to participate in the process. To see the Power Point from the summit, go to the link. To view photos from the event, click here.

Thank you to everyone for participating and embracing this new way of trying to improve our effectiveness and our ultimate goal of increasing the number of students who receive associate degrees and certificates. In addition, 4DX is providing a vehicle for initiating a continuing dialogue which should allow all of the NVC family to become engaged in improving student success.

I’m proud to report that overall as a college, we increased the number of degrees and certificates from 1,426 in 2013 to 1,793 in 2014 (numbers are still preliminary). The target for 2015 is to reach 1,576 degrees and certificates. This is a long way from 615 degrees and certificates in 2007-2008.