Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

This is not nearly as easy as it sounds. Our lives are filled with distractions that tempt us to remove our noses from the unpleasant grindstones that produce results. Crises interrupt. We would much rather manage these anyway. Our colleagues whine, gossip and complain. Someone reads a book or attends a conference and suggests a new management fad. A good leader moves on. A worthless boss digs in. Too much is going on to focus on results. It’s boring. People just want to have fun.

Immersed in this seductive corporate cacophony, real leaders cover their ears and hunker down. They focus themselves. They focus others. Here’s how they do it:

1. Focus yourself first. Don’t fret about the slackers and pot stirrers until you have yourself in hand. Look at whatever piece of paper or screen is in front of you. Write “RESULTS” in big letters at the top of it. That will help you think straight.

2. Refocus yourself several times a day. As you work through your daily schedule, ask yourself what results you want from this meeting. If you must attend a worthless meeting—and they cannot all be avoided—multitask mentally while occasionally making eye contact with the speakers and nodding. Think about results. Your colleagues will be none the wiser.

3. Ask the obvious questions no one else is asking. “What results are we trying to produce here? What is the problem exactly? What are our options? What’s the best option? What will we do next? Who will do it? When will we do it?”

How do you relentlessly focus yourself and others on results?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

Everyone wants to achieve great results—so long as the process for producing those results is easy, simple, quick and fun. Predictably, achieving goals that mean something involves more than that. And meaningful performance and outcome indicators are not that easy to find. Most successful leaders invest considerable energy over a period of time in finding and deploying the best indicators.

1. Get a small group of committed and knowledgeable leaders together. At this early stage, there is no point in talking with colleagues who believe measuring performance is a waste of time. Select people who care and who are knowledgeable about the processes involved for this critical first step.

2. Brainstorm a list of possible indicators. Invite your group of diehards to suggest every possible measurement they can. This is not the time to be critical. Just get the ideas flowing.

3. Winnow the list by subjecting each proposed indicator to some hard questions. Will the stakeholders agree that this metric matters? Does the measure involved data you are already collecting or can retrieve reliably without a huge additional investment of time and energy? Are comparative data available? Can the process owners make a difference in this indicator? Will people feel proud when they have achieved the goal?

How do you go about measuring things that matter?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

We hate to admit it, but we all conduct our personal and professional lives based, at least in part, on values that do not make us proud. The driving values in our lives are often not excellence, service and teamwork, but conformity, greed and selfishness. While the base human values cannot be entirely eliminated from our lives and organizations, desirable results begin with the identification of our ideal values, those things the best parts of us long to become.

1. Identify the role models in your organization. You know who they are. They are the people who inspire others to be better. They are the folks the slackers and miserable cusses despise. Ask them what values should drive the organization. They will tell you. Listen to them.

2. Rank your values. You can’t focus on everything. Depending on your business, certain values will naturally matter more than others. In health care, for example, few would argue that safety should not be the primary organizational value.

3. Limit the number of your core organizational values. There are an endless number of laudable values you might pursue, but results demand a sustained focus. Human beings can only focus on a limited number of things at one time.

What ideal values drive your personal and organizational results?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

The possibilities for measurement are endless. Since we all want to succeed without expending any real effort, your colleagues will initially lobby for easy measures. Then they will argue for measures they can personally control; it’s much harder to persuade others to go along with you to achieve results. Some things are too labor intensive to measure and all metrics can and will be criticized for being inaccurate or misleading.

1. Begin with your core organizational values. Every organization now posts its mission, vision and values on any empty wall. What measures would bring those values to life? If teamwork is one of your core values, how exactly would you measure that? Since there are just so many core values to go around, it is likely that your colleagues and competitors are pursuing similar values. How do they measure their success in conforming to the organizational values they espouse? This approach brings the added value of helping you to identify comparative data, which will aid you in judging your relative performance.

2. Choose measures with some scientific validity. By their nature, measures of employee and customer satisfaction are measures of perception. But standard surveys have advanced to the point that they are highly reliable and predictive given their validated methodologies and the large databases most vendors now maintain.

3. Include some process and some outcome indicators in your balanced scorecard. Exceptional performance on key process indicators will reassure you that you are doing the right things to achieve the outcomes you seek. Outcome indictors reveal whether you are actually delivering the outcomes you intended.

How do you decide on the results you want to achieve?