I'll admit after enough failures despite my best efforts and sacrifices in simple projects as well as big projects I have spent enough time contemplating on how to achieve results and be generally result oriented. To some people this comes naturally, they just passionately track their progress and need to see tangible results before their eyes to feel good, all salutes to them, but for a lot of us "dreamer types" this attitude doesn’t come easy.
So we learn it.
But easier said then done, where do you start? Here are my 10 cents on how to be more result oriented.
1. Accept you have a problem.
2. Know what "result" you are looking for.
It doesn’t to be precise and can be work under development things that constantly change and need to be assessed (as a matter of fact you should) but something has to go on paper.
3. Track your pace
After you have jot down your results, you need to break them to into pieces that can be measured against time and you need to track progress and asses your plan frequently.
4. Feel your direction
This is hard to explain, but if you feeling good about the pace of things, you are on the right track, if you have even slight bad feeling about something not falling in to place get back to the drawing board and look at your plans.
5. Forge alliances
We all know the importance of gathering support and achieving results, so look around, ask for help, pay people money, give them a ego boost, threaten them or do what ever it takes to get the stuff moving a little faster to wards the end result.
6. Track other people's progress and set their results for them if they can’t do it for themselves
If "others" are involved in your project make sure they are as focused to achieve the end result and immediate results and are on track
Make them understand and offer the right incentives for them to achieve their immediate results and end result.
The one thing that sucks more then screwing up a project yourself is seeing someone else screw up a project for you.
6. Push it a tad bit harder
If you believe you are at comfort pursuing "the result", something is wrong already. Result oriented people are always striving that little bit harder and the only thing they are comfortable with is till they get result out is "trying that little bit harder".
7. Eliminate baggage
Baggage can be wrong team members, wrong people, wrong place, wrong computer, wrong software, wrong food you ate in the morning that makes you sleepy.
You need to be aware of obstacles (direct and indirect) to your result and eliminate them fast.
This includes firing employees who cannot be motivated after trying enough times to achieve results both personal and companies.
Be ruthless; fire them for their own good. There are enough places that take mediocre motivation (you can fix skill, but if someone lacks motivation that cant be fixed either).
8. Manage and monitor input/outputs
eventually it all comes down to input and output. What i mean here, people who are result oriented are very aware of what goes in and what comes out apart from what was expected to come out.
Imagine a transparent box made of smaller black boxes. In the bigger box you input the resources and raw material. This raw material depending on where its needed inside the bigger box goes to smaller black boxes. Each black box outputs a processed material required to make the end product. Once all the black boxes have outputed the right processed material the bigger box takes these outputs from smaller boxes and combines them before sending it out as a sparkling product you can be proud of.
This would only work if each black box worked perfectly. Only then.
Simply put being result orinted is about what is expected out of that bigger box and then finding out and putting in what is required for that particular output. But manage the output of the smaller boxes often and spot problems at that level early and quickly, correct them, feed in the right raw material and combine efforts of these smaller boxes to make the final product.
Obviously this post is a "work under development" too, and ill append this post based on my own learnings.
Hmm wondering if that black box concept sucked..hmm gotta pick better analogies...
