HOW CAN WE BE MORE EFFECTIVE?

 

Increasing Effectiveness: The secret of success?

 

Everyone always wants to be effective in their work and personal lives. How can this be achieved? What does being effective really mean in the workplace as we know it? Being effective means doing the right things at the right time to obtain the best outcomes for your organisation and yourself.,usually in that order. Surprisingly it has little correlation with intelligence or even creativity. There are many people who are very intelligent and indeed very creative but they do not register as being effective because they cannot transform their talents into concrete actions which are effective and can deliver optimal results. There are many viewpoints on this. There are those managers who make things happen, there are those who watch things happen and there are those who just don't know what is happening. Where do we fit in? -- probably in some situations we area mixture of all three of these elements -- hopefully we can make things happen but sometimes we hold back because of either personal or organisational constraints.

 

Is personality the key ? Do you have to be bold,ambitious decisive and even loud to be effective? Personality is very important but it is increasingly clear that techniques to make you more effective can be learnt and need to be practised by you in the correct context. These techniques encompass, planning,organising,motivating, delegating and controlling. You will still need the personality to practise them correctly but we all need to look at how we can become more effective. According to David Mclelland of Harvard Business School we need to examine the following;

• Do we set ourselves realistic but stretching goals?
• Do we prefer situations where we can influence the outcomes ourselves?
• Are we more concerned with doing well - doing a good job per se, rather than rewards? We get our rewards from accomplishment rather than cash.
• Are we satisfied with the status quo or do we think we can change things for the better?
• Are we enthusiastic and committed to things?
• Do we take calculated risks?
• Do we constantly monitor our own and our subordinates' performance and act on it?
• Are we decisive in that we can sum up situations quickly, define alternative actions, pick the correct alternative and get everyone to support the way forward?
• Do we communicate well with our work colleagues?
• Do we demand high performance from ourselves and others as well?
• Do we show perseverance in the face of adversity and take setbacks as learning points?
• Do we listen to and take advice but then decide on our own course of action and then follow it through?

If you do all of the above and more then you are very effective. In reality for all of us, being more effective is a work in progress and I do mean work - we have to work at it constantly. We have to ask ourselves questions like; What did I set out to do? What did I achieve? Was it what I wanted to achieve? Where are the achievement gaps? How can I do better?

Observation, analysis and learning will hopefully make us become more effective. Personal appraisals and even external coaching , both delivered by high quality individuals can help. Recent external coaching which I have received has been excellent in assisting me. Other management techniques like; planning,motivation,leadership, control, target setting, communication and delegation can assist you in becoming more effective but your experience of them cannot and must not be just attending a relevant training course. You must have practical experience and support in applying them to real world situations.

Being more effective can be learnt but it also needs to be worked on.