Leaders achieve results.

Effective leaders have the ability and discipline to weed through busy activities, identify what results they need to achieve, and then focus their time, energy, and resources on achieving those results.  ~Kathryn Scanland

We all bemoan and complain about not getting enough done, not making it through our to-do list, and not having enough time.  It’s not difficult in nearly any job, profession, or position to create busy work and maintain a high level of activity.

Effective leaders have the ability and discipline to weed through busy activities, identify what results they need to achieve and then focus their time, energy and resources on achieving those results.  In my work I’ve run into numerous clients who have ideas, many of them good ideas; however, many times they don’t know what it is they are trying to achieve through that idea.  As I frequently say, it’s an idea without a strategy.

It can be as simple as creating a brochure highlighting customer success stories (but not knowing how it will be used or what results might be achieved by having this brochure), or buying a new software application or program to organize contacts (but not knowing what results we might hope for given this new way of organizing contacts), or even acquiring another organization (but not having identified our expectations for what we’ll be able to achieve with this specific organization that is now a part of our larger organization).  Until we identify the results we hope to achieve by all this activity, all we’re really doing is staying busy, but not necessarily achieving results.

I attend client board meetings periodically and I’ve found that experience to be somewhat like watching a soap opera, at least so I’ve been told.  Since I’m not a soap opera watcher I can only go by what I’ve heard, but I’ve heard that you can watch a soap opera once a year and keep up with the plot.  Many times that’s how I feel about board meetings.  I can pop in once a year (or once every several years) and feel like I’m sitting through the same meeting I sat through one or two years ago.  I think it’s because even board meetings (and other similar meetings) become an activity without a great deal of thought given to what results we hope to achieve by having that meeting.

Peter Drucker might refer to achieving results as contribution.  In The Essential Drucker, he provides an illustration.

Nurse Bryan was a long-serving nurse at a hospital.  She was not particularly distinguished, had not in fact ever been a supervisor.  But whenever a decision on a patient’s care came up on her floor, Nurse Bryan would ask, “Are we doing the best we can do to help this patient?”  Patients on Nurse Bryan’s floor did better and recovered faster.  Gradually over the years, the whole hospital had learned to adopt what came to be known as Nurse Bryan’s Rule; had learned, in other words, to ask, “Are we really making the best contribution to the purpose of this hospital?”

Achieving results separates the effective leaders from the leaders who are just busy people.