Make Success Measurable is filled with practical techniques. Even more, it is a workbook, providing opportunities to apply new concepts to real work. Whether you want to be able to create more focus within your own work unit, be able to demonstrate tangible results to your manager, prioritize your own work by aligning your day to day activities with the most important initiatives, or coach customers who are seeking your expertise in developing performance measures, this book can help.
As a result of reading this book and trying the exercises, you should be able to:
1) Convert new visions, strategies, and directions into achievable outcome-based goals that can better yourself and others in your organization.
2) Set goals that are specific, measurable, aggressive, achievable, relevant, and time bound. (SMART Goals)
3) Set goals that matter to those expecting a return on their funding dollars.
4) Set goals that matter to you personally in terms of opportunities, rewards, and skills.
5) Choose from a variety of management disciplines to achieve your goals.
6) Set goals that matter to customers who want speed, quality, and prompt service.
Douglas K. Smith organizes his book in four parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-4), he provides the background, concepts, tools, techniques, and frameworks you need to set specific outcome-based goals that matter to successfully navigate today's most pressing performance challenges. In the second part (Chapters 5-7), he focuses on helping you align and coordinate goals throughout your organization. In the third part (Chapters 8-10), he describes the management disciplines you need to achieve your goals and how to make choices among them. In the fourth part (Chapter 11), he concludes the book with a step-by-step design for building an outcomes management system in your organization.
In this context, in Chapter 10, he reviews the management disciplines you must understand in order to succeed in the face of change, and introduces the critical distinction between decision-diven change and behavior-driven change, and describes how to manage each successfully. Hence, he argues that most change efforts fall far short of their potential. Usually that's because leaders fail to address the deep behavioral changes they are seeking. And thus, he lists the following ten management principles as the heart of any successful change effort:
1. Keep performance results the primary objective of behavior and skill change.
2. Continually increase the number of individuals taking responsibility for their own change.
3. Make sure that each person always knows why his or her performance and change matters to the purpose and results of the whole organization.
4. Put people in a position to learn by doing and provide them with the information and support they need just in time to perform.
5. Embrace improvisation as the best path to both performance and change.
6. Use team performance to drive change whenever demanded.
7. Concentrate organizational designs on the work that people do, not on the decision-making authority they have.
8. Create and focus energy and meaningful language because these are the scarcest resources during periods of change.
9. Stimulate and sustain behavior-driven change by harmonizing initiatives throughout the organization.
10. Practice leadership based on the courage to live the change you wish to bring about.
Finally, he argues that if you expect others to change their behavior, you have to change yours. It's as simple and as hard as that.
I strongly recommend.