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Answer Upon - Are You Measuring Something Meaningful?
Look upon yourself as a company with a product or service to sell. Understand your market and devise a dynamic marketing campaign, remembering that companies hire employees who offer them the best results and the best value for money.Begin by identifying your skills, qualifications, and accomplishments. Adopt a customer-focused approach. What benefits and results can you offer employers? Are your skills marketable and up-to-date?Employers are in the market for team-players and problem-solvers. They want to see evidence in your CV or resume of specific, quantifiable accomplishments.Determine what additional skills you need to develop to make yourself more marketable. Take advantage of all opportunities for continuous learning and professional development.Successful businesses win customers by developing a unique selling proposition. To give yourself a competitive advantage, analyse what other employees in your field are offering. It is not enough to emulate them; you must strive to differentiate yourself by offering something extra, something unique.Try to assess yourself as objectively as possible in order to identify your marketable features. Analyse your performance appraisals and, if possible, enlist the help of a trusted friend or colleague
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care str
In the dynamic new world we live in, we might almost be forgiven for thinking that we are enslaved by technology and run over on the information highway. Yet, the other way of looking at it is how technology and all those doses of free-flowing information have empowered us, in ways previously unimaginable.Nowhere is this new power bestowed on us more pronounced than in the world of business and marketing. The Internet has given a whole new impetus to viral and word of mouth marketing; in fact, one could say that it has led to the resurrection of these age old marketing methods. Today, news about a company or business- both good and bad- flows so quickly and with such momentum that it has the potency to create or destroy businesses.Businesses that don’t listen to what their consumers are saying and how the society rates them are bound to fail, sooner rather than later. In fact, consumer feedback and its impact on branding has become a recurring theme amongst marketing thinkers recently. A growing number of books and case studies highlight the correlation between the success of companies that are in tune with their customers’ needs and feedback, or the rapid decline or fall from grace of companies that do not take customer feedback as seriously.Most companies do have the
INTRODUCTION
You sit before the monthly report, which might be an inch or so thick, and you contemplate whether it's the best use of your time to paw through the pages to check if there's anything useful in there for you. Past experience tells you that the report is full of many measures graphed in all their splendor, but virtually none of them pique your interest, help you make the decisions you barely have time to give enough thought to as it is...
TYPICALLY, PERFORMANCE MEASURES ARE NOT EMOTIVE ENOUGH
Do you have measures with names like these?
Employee Productivity.
Cost Efficiency.
Product Quality.
Community Engagement.
Customer Relationship.
Financial Sustainability.
Stakeholder Buy-in.
If you do, then there's a good chance that those measures are either not brought to life, or what is brought to life is a poor indicator of the result you are trying to measure. Why? Because when people look at measures that are named like those listed above, they often have no idea what they exactly mean, or have very divergent ideas of what they think they mean, or have no feeling of connection to them. They just look like a list of buzz words or phrases that every one else seems to be tossing around.
If people don't share a single, sharply focused, easily imaginable vision of a result they want to create, any effort to measure that result will waste time. And if you do successfully get some measures established, it's likely they just won't stimulate the excitement and motivation needed to make the result happen.
BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT
If something is inert it means it's incapable of action, it is lifeless. Like the reaction you get when you put a concrete brick in a bucket of water, pretty much nothing comes of it. You just have a concrete brick sitting in a bucket of water. When we talk about business language being inert, it's when the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:
"The outcomes will include valuable input into environmentally sustainable solutions to underpin the many proposed developments on the airport, as well as independent research to assist in making effective management decisions for this growing site." - What does 'valuable input' mean? How would you recognise an 'environmentally sustainable solution' from any other solution? What does a management decision that is effective look like?
"Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning." - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a 'holistic and integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care stra
By now hopefully most managers and professional know that involving the right people in change initiatives is a key factor that will impact success. Involving those who work in the processes that will be impacted is crucial, as they will ultimately be responsible for carrying out the change on a day-to-day basis.However, how can we make sure we select the right people from the process? One way to look at it is to consider the model presented by Everett Rogers in his book “Diffusion of Innovations.”Consider the normal distribution, a bell-shaped curve that in this case represents variation in human preferences. At one end of the distribution are what Rogers calls the Innovators and Early Adopters, at the other end are the Late Adopters and Laggards, and in the middle is the Majority. We usually would expect about 2/3rds of people to fall into the middle category, with the remaining evenly split between the two tails of the curve.The curve can be thought of as predicting who will adopt a new technology, idea, etc. For example, were you one of the first on your block to have a cell phone? When a new restaurant opens are you one of the first to try it? If so, then you are an innovator/early adopter, on the leading edge for at least these specific items. If you wait
Financial Sustainability.
Stakeholder Buy-in.
If you do, then there's a good chance that those measures are either not brought to life, or what is brought to life is a poor indicator of the result you are trying to measure. Why? Because when people look at measures that are named like those listed above, they often have no idea what they exactly mean, or have very divergent ideas of what they think they mean, or have no feeling of connection to them. They just look like a list of buzz words or phrases that every one else seems to be tossing around.
If people don't share a single, sharply focused, easily imaginable vision of a result they want to create, any effort to measure that result will waste time. And if you do successfully get some measures established, it's likely they just won't stimulate the excitement and motivation needed to make the result happen.
BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT
If something is inert it means it's incapable of action, it is lifeless. Like the reaction you get when you put a concrete brick in a bucket of water, pretty much nothing comes of it. You just have a concrete brick sitting in a bucket of water. When we talk about business language being inert, it's when the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:
"The outcomes will include valuable input into environmentally sustainable solutions to underpin the many proposed developments on the airport, as well as independent research to assist in making effective management decisions for this growing site." - What does 'valuable input' mean? How would you recognise an 'environmentally sustainable solution' from any other solution? What does a management decision that is effective look like?
"Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning." - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a 'holistic and integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care str
There are several ways to work from home. Some of the more popular ways are affiliate programs, direct marketing and starting your own business. However it is also possible to find employers who hire people to work at home in various postions such as telemarketing, sales, teaching, freelance writing, etc. I have spent countless hours online searching for work at home jobs and even started a community to list the job leads I have found. (http://www.real-home-employment.com)You may wish you could start tomorrow, but honestly it could take six months to a year until you open for business or find a job. I wish I could offer you some time kind of timeline to success but it just isn't possible. I know we all see alot of ads that offer overnight success or thousands of dollars per hour earned, but the honest truth is most home businesses take 5 years of hard work before you may even see these types of returns and the higher percentage of work at home jobs you find are on a per need basis or start out part time.So,as you can see, actually finding the work at home opportunity or postion that is right for you can be 1) Confusing 2) Time consuming 3) Not an overnight or immediate success 4) Takes lots of planni
BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT
If something is inert it means it's incapable of action, it is lifeless. Like the reaction you get when you put a concrete brick in a bucket of water, pretty much nothing comes of it. You just have a concrete brick sitting in a bucket of water. When we talk about business language being inert, it's when the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:
"The outcomes will include valuable input into environmentally sustainable solutions to underpin the many proposed developments on the airport, as well as independent research to assist in making effective management decisions for this growing site." - What does 'valuable input' mean? How would you recognise an 'environmentally sustainable solution' from any other solution? What does a management decision that is effective look like?
"Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning." - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a 'holistic and integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care str
Selecting the project becomes the necessary step after identifying the need for process improvement in your business or, for that matter, your department. But selecting a project is a series of complex decision-making processes aided by a variety of tools. A wrong project selection for Six Sigma implementation means the project is not in line with your business. You will end up encountering the same roadblocks and going in circles over and again.Steps Involved In Six Sigma Project SelectionThe steps that need to be taken in selecting a project for Six Sigma vary as per your line of business and the scale of the operation. However, the whole scope of Six Sigma hinges on two key focal points, namely, ‘total customer satisfaction’ and ‘increased return on investment.’ The steps may be formulated, keeping this in view.1. Put The Customer First: Customer satisfaction being the first focal point, know the critical points to assure quality to drive the project (VOC). Each individual customer has a different point of view about quality and the summation of them can be the first point. Make use of the Pareto Chart for prioritizing the issues.2. Projects Must Be In Line With Your Business: List the top three roadblocks faced by all the functional heads in your organizatio
"Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning." - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a 'holistic and integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care str
With the number of small businesses increasing by the day, the competition from larger companies is also getting tough. If you own a small business, chances are that you have faced stiff competition from some mall, supermarket, or department store at one time. Although small businesses do not have the kind of funds big businesses have, this does not mean that your small business cannot be a success. This article discusses some ways to compete successfully with big businesses.Customer Relations;For any business, the customer is king. Keeping your customers happy is the first step toward successfully dealing with big competitors.Unique Products;Emphasize the uniqueness of your products and services vis-?-vis that of your competitor. People will opt for your products and services only when they feel you offer something different from your big rival. Market customized products to lure customers.Training Employees;One of the differences between large companies and small businesses is that the former routinely train their employees in customer service. Do not neglect this aspect of your business if you want to compete with big businesses.Employee Satisfaction;Provide your employees with bonuses, incentives, and other benefits in order to in
"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?
"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care strategies supporting the local and international patients we serve." - When you are fostering, what are you actually doing? What kinds of diversity are good, and what kinds of diversity should not be fostered? How would you distinguish a 'culturally-competent care strategy' from any other kind of competent care strategy (is it obvious to those that contribute to achieving this goal what a care strategy is exactly?).
Each of these goals share the prolific use of inert words like valuable, input, sustainable, underpin, effective, support, focus, holistic, integrated, excellence, engagement, service, enhance, responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness (these last two I think must be the most used of all the inert words as building blocks to writing business goals), streamlining, reasonable, foster, diversity, competent and strategy. You can read more fine examples of inert language used in our society in Don Watson's book, Death Sentence: The Decay Of Public Language. You know there are many more inert words that bulk-up our business language - perhaps when you have your next cup of your beverage of choice, you might sit down with your business's plan and look for the inert words in the goal statements. How well do you really understand what those goals mean?
And that's largely the effect of inert words in our business language - it's often hard to really understand what they mean. For example, it's far easier for you to imagine in your mind what it would be like to feel energetic all day and be able to site and move comfortably and pain-free and think clearly and enjoy eating fresh foods like apples and carrots and sleep soundly at night, than it is to imagine having "health improvements". When our language helps us vividly and in detail imagine the result it describes, it moves us, motivates us and almost programs us to make that result a reality. Sometimes it can even move us to realise that it's not the result we really want, and we can avoid wasting effort traveling in that direction.
Particularly in business, 'language that moves us' is critical if you are going to design the right kind of measures to give you feedback about your progress toward your goals.
MEANINGFUL MEASURES COME FROM 'LANGUAGE THAT MOVES'
You simply can't measure a result that is described by inert language. Measures are data that we have analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which a particular result is occurring. Like the measure of employee absenteeism is data about individual employees' attendance at work that has been analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which employees are available for work. Evidence is something that is based in the physical world, the world of our 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. So if a goal or result is to be measurable, then it must be able to be described in terms of what someone would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if that result were occurring.
Some fairly reasonable examples of organisational goals that get beyond the typical inert language are:
From the Workers Compensation Board
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