Results centred leadership

In addition to the more traditional types of results associated with volume, cost and quality of products and services, all organisation generate results from the action of transacting information and knowledge.

In good practice organisations all the efforts of every employee are designed to add value to the business – to make a difference to its performance and the specific results it achieves – whatever the individual’s role and responsibilities.

Here are four actions to help you achieve good results:

1. Targets

An organisation’s performance in relation to results cannot be assessed fully unless the results matched against the targets set by the organisation. Even then, we might not be fully satisfied unless we know if the targets set are relevant in terms of the organisation’s declared aspirations, e.g. a vision that declares ‘we will become the world’s leading suppler of aluminium’ requires the organisation to set targets that reflect a global rather than a local one.

Organisations sometimes refer to incremental and breakthrough targets for key performance results. Others talk about short and long-term targets. The choice of target is dependent upon what the organisation wants to achieve and when it wants to achieve it, positioned within a bigger picture of the market place and customer behaviour. Effective organisations apply specific targets to specific indicators rather than setting one or two general targets to cover whole groups of indicators.

2. Trends

TEN encourages organisations to plan and manage for repeated, durable good performance rather than be satisfied with ‘one-off’ success, which relies more on good fortune and serendipity. Sustainability is assessed by the degree to which the organisations key performance results show positive trends over a period of years.

To what degree are you comparing performance, year on year, interpreting patterns and trends, anticipating future performance, reviewing targets and refining how you do tings in order to influence key performance results.

3. Comparisons

Regardless of whether you benchmark at the process, organisational or metrics level, using benchmark data should begin with the development of a benchmarking strategy that will direct your efforts. The critical success factors for benchmarking are the methodology you use and your choice of benchmarking partners. The successful selection of both should lead to the collection of data that could have a very significant effect on the improvement of your processes, the targets you set and how you interpret the results.

4. Range

Although you may be measuring a range of activities and processes both in terms of ‘outcomes’ and ‘indicators,’ there are a number of interesting questions. How selective are you in what you are choosing to measure and what you are choosing to report? Does your set of results align with your strategy, your business plan and your core key processes? Are you producing a pertinent, comprehensive set of results for your organisation?

It’s a matter of measurement and orientation

In organisations that don’t measure or set targets, results are sill produced but the degree to which they meet stakeholders’ requirements will depend more on good fortune than planning. When organisations use our ‘potential for business’ self-assessment diagnostic tool, a substantial proportion of them score low in the results criteria, not because their work does not produce results, but because they have never managed their activities with the end in mind.

In these types of organisations, results just happen and there is little awareness of current performance, even less evaluation of how that performance compares against a desired outcome and, not surprisingly, no target setting for future achievement and improvement.

However, many organisations have found that the processes required for establishing a measurement and results culture have already been defined and refined by others and there is a rich body of knowledge to use from external sources. Often an organisation’s customers and suppliers can play an important role in supporting the establishment of a results-orientated culture.

William Montgomery
CEO of TEN

Through his workshops, William Montgomery has helped hundreds of organisations and schools and thousands of people to improve their leadership. To discuss your requirements, please send a message to info@askten.co.uk.