Wanted

DELIVER

RESULTS

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10

wa nte d

If you don’t know what results are

required of you, you stand no chance

Always keep focused on your company’s goals, and

then work backwards from there to determine the

results you have to achieve on a day-by-day basis.

This is at the crux of employment. For

any work there must be an end result

that is of value to employers and their

customers. There is no point in

labouring away unless it helps bring in

the money. The expenditure of your

physical, emotional and intellectual

energies will be in vain if nothing happens which benefits your

company. That beneficial result might be a sale, a problem fixed,

a positive customer experience, a deadline met or a financial

target achieved. Every employee should be clear about the

results expected of them and how these contribute to the overall

performance of the company.

This means an effective response to the question: ‘What am I here

for?’ The answer is not, ‘I am here to please my boss’ or ‘I am here

to earn money’. Nor is it ‘I am here to carry out the tasks I’m told to

do’. The answer is ‘I am here to deliver results linked to the

company’s goals’. Every employee needs to be clear about this link.

Too many organisations are task driven. The focus is on the task

rather than on what the task should achieve. Tasks are the same

as assigned activities, directed actions or instructions. An

example is stacking shelves rather than attending to a customer

waiting to be served. In such cases employees and their bosses

lose sight of the end result – to maximise sales by creating an

incredibly positive experience for a customer. Keeping a

customer hanging around is not conducive to this.

Every day keep a

picture in your mind

of the results

required of you

When people are clear about the results expected of them and

how these link to company goals they will be able to determine

their daily tasks accordingly. This is called empowerment. In the

absence of empowerment there is ‘command and control’ and all

people do is what their bosses tell them to do.

Successful people are highly focused on results. They will ‘read’

the business well and even generate their own objectives if the

organisation is so muddled it fails to specify the goals to be

achieved. The people who are thus wanted are those who can see

clearly what has to be achieved and also how to go about it. The

‘how’ is the task. The ‘what’ is an individual result essentially

linked to a corporate goal.

The advantage of being results oriented is that you are more

likely to achieve meaningful results than if you are task

oriented. When asked at the interview, ‘What have you done over

the last few years?’ it is far better to say, ‘I have contributed to

increased sales by consistently achieving a 93 per cent customer

satisfaction rating’ than ‘I have answered 80 calls a day’.

Any organisation will want people who achieve results linked to

goals. All you have to do is convince them (as well as yourself )

that you deliver great results.

PRA C T I CA L TI P S

G

Stop saying ‘I do this at work’ and instead say ‘This is what I

achieve at work, day by day’.

G

Stop seeing work as tasks but instead see it as a set of

important results to be achieved.

G

Create your own qualitative and quantitative measures for

gauging these results.

G

Establish a clear link in your mind between how the results

you have to achieve are linked to corporate goals.

11

Deliver Results