Result Orientation an attitude!

I like to ask managers the following question in seminars: Why are Helene Fischer and Robbie Williams successful? Here are the most common answers:

• because he/she looks good
• because he/she has the right management
• because he/she was particularly lucky
• because he/she is exceptionally talented

But are those really the reasons? From a results-oriented perspective, hardly. Helene Fischer and Robbie Williams are successful for one reason: because they produce results. Both artists manage to fill entire soccer stadiums. Their sales figures achieve top results.

Steel magnate W. Clement Stone had Result Orientation to say on the subject of Result Orientation :

"In my profession, I have gotten into the habit of judging people solely by their results. Results speak much louder than fine words."

What is the situation in our companies with regard to Result Orientation? From our perspective, leader employees in German-speaking countries are still very much task- or activity-oriented. How do we know this? Quite simply from the following statements, which we hear every day from managers in training and coaching sessions:

• I'm always the last one to leave the office.
• I work the hardest at our company.
• I have eight meetings a day.
• I receive 150 emails every day.
• I work two hours of overtime every day.
• I have five client appointments per week.

So much for the activities and tasks. But when we ask what results have been achieved, the room falls silent.

Task and activity orientation is always based on input; people consider, describe, and focus on what is put into a process or task. However, they often neglect the output, i.e., the result that comes out at the end. With task or activity orientation, the urgent usually prevails; unfortunately, what is really important is often neglected. Result Orientation , is always output-oriented. leader who focus on results think specifically about what outcome they want to achieve and what resources are needed to do so. Then the leader focuses on what is really important and lets go of what is urgent (and unimportant).

I am a fan of VFB Stuttgart, my city's soccer club. Here, too, I see a good example of Result Orientation. The Stuttgart team is currently playing attractive soccer for long stretches of the game. Unfortunately, however, they are not scoring any points and are losing almost every game. From an activity orientation perspective, it is really fun to watch. But it is not very effective for the Bundesliga table. When manager Robin Dutt then says in an interview,"Our style of play is more important than the result,"the carousel of activity orientation has started spinning. The outcome is open. Let's see what the table looks like at the end of the season. I sometimes wonder whether something like this would happen at Bayern Munich, for example. Hardly.

So the key question is: How can I shift from a task- or activity-oriented approach to Result Orientation in my day-to-day management and work? The answer is actually quite simple, but not easy to implement: by moving away from task or activity orientation and consciously Result Orientation . The Result-Oriented Job Description (Resource 4 from the Leading Simple management system) is an extremely effective tool that supports you in this specific implementation.