Just over one year ago I started blogging regularly. Since then, one topic has run through everything, that of effectiveness. Not productivity and not efficiency. Effectiveness goes well beyond both of those. the time has now come to write a series of blogs on actually becoming effective. Welcome to How To Be Effective Part1.
Effectiveness is simply a means by which we can move toward and hopefully achieve our objective. The problem is that most individuals and organisations don’t have an overall objective. If you speak with them (especially organisations) they will trot out some sort of mission statement or target. The worse ones use words like “to be the best at….” or “to be the biggest” etc etc. These are meaningless phrases. What does best mean? What does biggest mean? No, what we need is a true objective, or to paraphrase the words of Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why. We all know what we do, some of us know how we do it but very few know or are able to articulate why we do it. Your objective or that of your organisation is why you do something, and no, the answer is not “to make a profit”.
Effective people and effective organisations can tell you immediately and easily why they do things and therefore what their objective really is. The most difficult part of trying to become effective, especially in a rapidly changing world, is to define the overall objective. I’m going to steal from Mr Sinek again because the example is so good that I am totally unable to come up with a better one. The objective (or why) of Apple is “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.” Now being effective for Apple is easy. All they need to do is ask does this project challenge the status quo and does it involve thinking differently?” If the answer is yes, then do it, if the answer is no, then no matter how profitable it is in the short run the answer must be no. For Apple, pursuing anything that challenges the status quo is effective.
Over a year ago when I started this blog I realised that my career with all it’s highs and lows had been carried out without a real objective and certainly without a real why. I sat down to think about the objective or why for both of my businesses and it was one of the most difficult (but rewarding) things I have every had to do. One of the outcomes of that process was this blog.
If you want to know the objective I came up with then here it is, based on Seth Godin’s “work that matters for people who care”.
“To do effective work that makes a difference for people and organisations who want to constantly improve and who care enough to take the risks to do it. To only work with people and organisations who actually want me to work with them.”
Now every decision is easy. When offered work I only need to ask “does it make a difference?”, “does the organisation care enough to take the risk?”, “do they really want me?” If the answer to all three questions is yes then as long as I have resource available I take the job. If the answer to any of the questions is no or maybe then refuse. Life is simple. A while ago I got offered a very profitable piece of consultancy business with a very well known organisation. The problem was the organisation was only doing it for cosmetic reasons and they just wanted me (or anyone with the skills) to go through the motions. Despite it being a considerable fee it failed the objective tests and so I turned it down. For the next couple of months I was kicking myself as we went into a lean period. However, as is always the way, something much better (although not as well paid) presented itself. I now don’t regret for one second turning down the original offer. Of course, if the objective were simply to accumulate as much money as possible, at all cost, then accepting the first offer would have been the correct decision. Just remember, the graveyard is full of people who can’t spend all the money they sold their “why” for.
Spend some time getting this stage of your effectiveness journey right and the rest will follow. If you don’t have your objective (or why) sorted properly then you can never be truly effective.
How do you know you are on the right road if you don’t know the destination?
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