Getting your Results on Track

Getting your required results “On Track”

The power of the right question.
Now that you have a simple way to measure you and your team’s 90 day priorities the next critical aspect to consider is what to do if you are behind. Sometimes this is obvious and it involves just spending the time doing what you know needs to next be done to get your tasks moved into the “on track” or “ahead” column. However quite often it is not that clear. The best way that I have found to accomplish this is to ask yourself a question on a consistent basis, i.e. daily, to keep you moving forward in accomplishing the priority task at hand.

The human brain can answer any question so of course the key to this technique is asking the right question. At Business Instincts Group (B.I.G.) the consulting firm I am a part of we have a construct that helps us determine the right questions to ask.

Question Construct:

What: What do you need to do?
Context: Type of action you need to take, i.e. is a new action, a consistent action, a bold action, etc.
Time: How often do you need to take this action, i.e. hourly, daily, weekly, etc.
Result: What is the desired result?
Incentive: Ask, why this is behind and “tag” (see example below)

Example:

As outlined in the October 12 post the measurable result Steve determined for his search engine optimization task was a Page 1 Keyword Search Engine result by Dec 31/09 for Sustainable Startup. Steve also determined that he was about 50% complete this task and that he was behind on it at that time.

The next thing we now do is design a question that Steve can ask himself to determine what he needs to do on an hourly, daily or weekly basis to get on track. FYI, My update meetings with the people I work with more often than not consist of answering the daily questions to determine what needs to be done that day to ensure we are on track with our measurable results.


The question that we designed for Steve:
What consistent action do I need to take today to ensure Sustainable Startup has a page 1 keyword result and I am not stressed by the amount of time it takes to do this task?




Here is the question broken down as to how we designed it as per our construct. What, (What, all the questions we do for this purpose start with “what”), consistent, (Context, to determine context ask the question why is it not getting done. If the answer is, “I don’t have enough time then the context may be consistency. If the answer is I am not sure what to do next the context may be what “new” action.) action do I need to take today, (Time, “today” is used because in discussing Steve he indicated that he needs to do daily work on this task.) to ensure Sustainable startup has a page 1 keyword result (Result, as demonstrated in the October 12/09 posts) and I am not stressed by the amount of time it takes to do it, (Incentive, is determined by asking what has prevented the person to be ahead of schedule on this task to date and then tagging the question at the end with what would prevent this from being the case).

For a video explanation of the above please see today’s accompanying video post

Next post we are going demonstrate this process in action showing how effective it can be as well as demonstrating the different results depending on the seemly slight difference in the question asked.

Measurement in an Organization Defines Culture

Measurement communicates to everyone what is most important to an organization and how the person, team or department fits into the organization. In order for measurement to be effective it generally needs to posses the following three characteristics.

1. Fits into and relates directly to the big picture. Again, this is why clarity is step one. If everyone in the organization clearly knows what the plan is they can know why the measurement at hand is important. I have found that the best way to ensure that measurement is effective and taken seriously is to have the people responsible for the measures design what the measures should be. By doing this the people responsible are also designing the process of executing the plan and strategy. The White Board Video accompanying this post will go through an exercise that demonstrates how to do this as well as accomplish the following two points.

2. Immediately Self-Measureable. Self Measurement is only effective if it is easily measureable at any moment by the people responsible. If it takes more time to measure or think about measuring than it does to write this sentence, typically people will not measure. Instead, they will get wrapped up in just trying to get things done because measurement has become something that gets in the way of getting things done. My experience has show that if something takes longer than 30 seconds to measure, people avoid measuring.

3. Public. People like and need to perform. If you do not create an environment where they are performers they will not perform. Give people a stage and watch what happens to performance! Making measureables public allows people the opportunity to show how they contribute to the objective. This is healthy from both the perspective of someone knowing where they fit as well as everyone else knowing where that person, team or department fits in an organization.