I came across this on the Great Leaders Serve blog (via Bill Hybels):
Bill, faced with more challenges than he could manage, began to search for a way to shorten his list of “priorities.” At the same time, he decided to shorten his time horizon. Rather than saying, “What should I focus on for the next year?” He said, “What should I focus on for the next 6 weeks?” As he admitted, he somewhat randomly chose the number 6. Nothing magic about it, he said it just felt manageable. So, as he described it, an experiment was taking shape.
Bill made a list of all the things he could focus on and decided to rank order the list. He used the following question:
What are the top six contributions I could make in the next six weeks?
Using this question as a filter, Bill went back through his list of all the things he COULD focus on and shortened the list to six items. He wrote them on a 3 x 5 card that he prominently displayed on his desk – he called it his 6×6. He reported that six weeks later, he had accomplished all six of the things on his list. He was thrilled! He repeated the experiment a second time – it worked again. Then, he made another breakthrough before he started the third round of the experiment; he actually arranged his calendar to help him accomplish the items on his 6×6.
Today, this 6×6 approach has become part of the culture of his organization. Leaders around the organization are selecting 6 key priorities and focusing on them for six weeks.
