Activity or Results? What Are You Rewarding?

What Defines Business Success? Activities or Results?

You know the answer. But, be wary. It is year-end appraisal and reward time, and it is tempting to reward people for completing tasks that may not translate to business results. Checking the box does give a sense of accomplishment, but what if these activities do not drive business outcomes?

?10 Behaviors That Inhibit a Results-Focused Organization

To what extent are these behaviors apparent in your team, creating gaps in performance?

• Insufficient strategic planning skills
• Obsessing over the completion of project checklists versus tracking business results
• Poor organization skills
• Prioritizing less relevant actions and losing focus on the end goal
• Failure to properly resolve problems that impact timelines, profitability or quality
• Failure to apply or redeploy resources as needed to reach goals
• Low personal effort
• Getting distracted by minor issues
• Fear of failure or mistakes?

• Stepping into the trap of activity-focused actions that mask real progress, including task lists and endless discussions without decisions and closure

Example 1: Frank noted in his self-appraisal that while the department he leads missed its revenue target for the year, he exceeded last year’s volume in sales conferences hosted, sales strategy meetings held and LinkedIn articles posted, including the new and exciting addition of videos. Maria, his leader, admires the energy and hours that Frank and his team put forth, but she struggles with how to address the revenue miss. There may be some external headwinds, but the root causes appear to be internal. Frank is loyal and talented, and Maria doesn’t want to create employee engagement issues and turnover. Yet, the business is experiencing an issue that it cannot risk seeing again next fiscal year.

Example 2: Dennis is struggling to write the year-end review for Christine, whose in-house IT service department has fallen behind on key service metrics and has exceeded its compensation budget due to excessive overtime. Christine’s self-appraisal highlighted her work on establishing a cloud-based repository for notes and user guides. She highlighted her employee engagement efforts–including weekly huddles and monthly team lunches–and she noted her ability to monitor the inbound queue in a detailed manner. Yet, her internal clients have had enough; they have been quite vocal about their dissatisfaction.

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How Do You Keep the Year-End Review and Reward Process Focused on Business Outcomes?

Keenly discern between check-the-box activities and business impacts. Reflect on what tasks, if they had been left undone, would not have jeopardized business results. This way, you can direct your attention to rewarding results and addressing underperformance.

In Frank’s example, leader Maria should critically evaluate the flurry of activity that Frank reported with a laser focus on the top-line miss. A deeper dive into the performance gap is needed.

In Christine’s example, leader Dennis should focus Christine on the connection between activities, poor performance and ultimate business impact–and whether or not the situation can be salvaged to regain the trust of her internal clients.

Both leaders are heading into difficult but necessary discussions. If no goals or weak goals were in place, this review season will be their time to reset for next year.

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10 Leadership Skills to Become and Stay Results-Focused in the Next Performance Year

When making the decision on where to invest time and money next fiscal year, hone your focus on compelling end results. Keep your team focused on strategic outcomes. As a result, team members may be more aligned, motivated, innovative and productive.

1. Develop a clear strategy aligned with your organization's mission.
2. Secure buy-in on that strategy from all levels of the organization.
3. Foster a positive attitude toward the strategic “why”.
4. Set short- and long-term goals that align with the strategy.
5. Define success specifically and measurably in terms of quantity, financial, timing and quality.
6. Ensure role clarity so that team members know their objectives, responsibilities and interdependencies.
7. Monitor progress, and address underperformance consistently and quickly.
8. Empower your team members to solve problems that are within their scopes.
9. Foster open dialogues about challenges that may hinder success.
10. Provide timely feedback; reward high performance, address performance gaps and guide improvement.

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Your Actions and Your Language Matter

Results-focused leaders think, act and talk in terms of outputs, results and decisions. You win through the following techniques:

• Ongoing reinforcement of the vision and overall goals
• Measurement of real progress against desired outcomes. This focus on end results may also lead to innovative ideas on how to increase productivity.
• Visible reporting of results for key contributors, stakeholders and internal teams.
• Linkage of trends in performance, feedback, customer sentiment and internal initiatives together so that urgencies are managed in context of the bigger picture.?
• Identification and isolation of poor results and trending concerns, which necessitate digging further.
• Recognition of success, looking for ways to provide positive feedback as well as ways to replicate what is going well.
• Support of your team members so that they will stay focused on desired business outcomes, removing distractions and non-productive activity.?

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Now What?

Start here and now. Are you satisfied with your goal setting, performance management and reward processes? Assess what you have and build from here. Where do you want to be a year from now?

?Contact me for results-focused action planning and execution.

?Leadership. Progress. Results.

?[email protected]

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