When organizations hit their targets, shareholders are happy, business leaders are happy and employees get their merit increase as a form of thanks. But are results driven organizations truly winning the race as defining success as meeting Quality, Safety, Service, Inventory Health, Revenue goals, Working capitol, Profit or are they simply taking the easy way to show success because the alternate is difficult.
What do I mean by “alternate”? When you ask a horse to drink water, they drink water. When you challenge your child to get an A, they get an A. When you set a goal to have a 6 figure salary by the time you’re 30, you get a 6 figure salary. But at the end of the day, have you done anything remarkable? This is where the “alternate” target is the “outcome”.
Companies disguise “outcome” as the vision and mission but fail to articulate how that connects to the employees of an organization. Similarly we define success to our children to a number, but fail to articulate it in terms of being a good citizen and supporting community. Sure we do advocate for that, but do we do it well?
I challenge organizations to speak in terms of creating loyal customers, being a known as a leader in sustainability or even work life balance. The problem is some leaders keep these lofty outcomes and strategies to themselves and trickle the concepts to the rank and file when they are told to vs. as a common theme at all times. I’ve come across some leaders who prefer to keep the employees focused on short term goals and never move them based on outcomes.
And here is the problem. The employee ships the orders for 100% on time service. But in the end, did they make a customer happy? Maybe? But if you asked an employee to Ensure 100% on time at the customer, that might engage the employee to follow up with carriers or customers real time to make sure all shipments arrived on time. By focusing on the outcome employees minds are engaged on greater scope to achieve customer satisfaction vs. being told to keep their head down and just ship on time.
We so miss the mark in asking people to perform to an result vs. an outcome which requires so much more creativity and resourcefulness. So what do we do to change this? Well, I ask you what do YOU do to change this.
I can offer my opinion, but truly the purpose of this article is to get you to think.
How do I move my leadership from a place of results driven to outcome driven to achieve greater potential and hit the target of why I’m in business ?
Once you figure that out, let me know and I’d love to engage with you.
Please connect with me at [email protected] or contact me via dropinceo.com contact page.
Be well-Deb