Continuing on with my Values Centric Organization article published recently, I wanted to introduce you all to something that the leading semiconductor company Intel cherishes the most – RESULTS ORIENTATION. The timing of this article is coincidentally a tribute to Andy Grove who died today- the first employees of Intel after its two founders and later years its CEO, Holocaust survivor from Hungary and a practical management guru. I salute you SIR.
As Intel describes it, it is set challenging and competitive goals and focus on the output by assuming responsibility and executing flawlessly. Any issues or problems that come in between have to be solved and confronted constructively and quickly to achieve the goal. Focusing your resources on the important results is key for success and managing through people to create a positive impact for the organizations is every manager’s priority. I do not see many organizations recognizing results orientation as a critical value.
For all types of organization, be it a small privately held one or a bigger public company or a government establishment and even a not-for-profit one, delivering on your goals successfully is essential. The leader in you should be able to push self and others to desired results and should celebrate successes. The value of results orientation is the basis behind setting up a matrix organization where every talent within the organization works for a product, solution or oriented towards a service, from various functionalities. The entire team has to agree to a set of objectives (remember SMART) and work together to achieve those with high quality. At the end of the day, the products or services that the company sells or gives is the one that brands the company to the customers. Even if you are in a research organization, it is critical that the development happening inside is mapped to a product that they can sell eventually or a service that they can offer later.
Every employee should review the work they are doing regularly with their immediate management and prioritize what is urgent and more important. Each employee needs to plan their work accordingly to ensure that important goals get done within the required time. Be realistic at your workload when you take on more work. As a manager, one must be aware of the stress levels within the team and try to re-prioritize and re-distribute the workload within your team. It is a good practice to keep your ears to the ground and actively listen to your team and to put some sense around what they say. Finally celebrate small successes and the eventual ones.
In these Agile days of working, it is easier to have discrete sets of results achieved within a shorter time span and corrective actions put in place for any deviations that happen. Three behaviours come to the fore-front to achieve results: Effective time management, managing stress at work (there is always going to be stress, you need to find your own ways to manage it properly) and good influencing skills to get things done. From the HR perspective, a few tweaks must be in place so that they start measuring the engagement and commitment levels of the employees to the programs they are in and to the organizations, and monitor if key decisions are being made quickly by the managers and whether they are putting undue stress on his or her employees to an extent that it affects results. Most metrics should be taken at a project or program level and not at a horizontal functional level.
For those of you who have not got the privilege of the working for Andy Grove and living during the times when he built Intel, I would highly recommend two books, “High Output Management” and “Only Paranoids Survive”.
The Author is a business and technology consultant based in India and if also a former employee of Intel. He also conducts leadership programs that are based on key values of organizations.