Most of Your People Are Focused on Activities Not Specific Measurable Desired Results

When I make the assertion to senior executives that 60+% of their peoples' efforts are wasted - that is they do not produce specific measurable desired results in time - most senior executives counter that may be true in generally, but is definitely not true in their organization.

To support their assertion that I am not accurate in their case, I usually get variations of: we have goals and objectives, we measure and monitor, we have regular performance reviews, we have rigorous training programs, coaching, mentoring and we exit non-performers. An impressive list. And I am not persuaded.

I say that most people are focused on activities not outcomes. Try running these experiments and test my assertion for yourself:

1) In your regular walk-arounds stop in to your folks offices, cubes or wherever they are at work and casually, very casually, ask these questions:
Q: What are you working on?

A: I'm doing XYZ (will usually be expressed as an activity)

Q: What result are you trying to produce?

A: (Listen carefully and you will hear a variations activity - finish XYZ) 

If you do get a result the person is working for, then ask them:

Q: Who is waiting for the result? And when is it due?

60+% of the time in these casual questionings, you will discover that people are focused on activities. You will discover they are not clear what desired result their activity is designed to produce, and invariably, they will not be specific about who is waiting for it, and by when its due.

2) Drop in on meetings in progress, again casually ask: what result are you all working on?

Mostly you will get activities, an agenda item they are dealing with or a project they are working on - but seldom a specific result, by a particular time, for a particular person.

So what to do?

Start making promises; create a culture in which making promises to a specific person, to produce a specific, measurable, desired result, in time is a core competency of the organization. Such that everyone gets your capacity to succeed is a function of you capacity to make and keep promises - not just the explicit ones in contracts and agreements, but also the implicit ones. 

It is the broken implicit promises that are the source of dissatisfaction and complaints. So it would be smart for everyone to have a way to surface what they are.

But that's a topic for another post.