Beyond The Call: Why Some of Your Team Go the Extra Mile and Others Don't Show
by Marc Woods, Steve Coomber
9.
NEXT STEPS
‘The secret of success is constancy of purpose.’
Benjamin Disraeli British politician
The Business Case for Discretionary Effort
As I mentioned at the beginning of the book, one of the main reasons I became involved with the discretionary effort project, was due to the many conversations I had with executives as I travelled the world on my speaking engagements. They sensed that colleagues were willing to go the extra mile in contributing towards to the goals of the organization, but weren’t sure of the best way to help them get there. It was finding that elusive key to unlock the full potential of employees.
As I began to find out more about discretionary effort, many people, both before, during, and after the research was conducted, told me their stories of how discretionary effort had helped their organization in different situations.
The anecdotal evidence for the importance of discretionary effort, and the role that it can play in an organization’s success, appeared overwhelming. But anecdotal evidence doesn’t always carry much weight with the decision makers in organizations. If you want to take culture changing action, obtain funding for projects and initiatives, alter some of the fundamental ways that people behave, shape training and development, introduce new hiring criteria, adapt leadership approaches, then you are likely to need more than anecdotal evidence to support your case.
Fortunately, the research we did also revealed some hard, objective evidence ...